Secret Service Flies In Troops, Vehicles For Trump-Putin Summit In Alaska: Report
When Anchorage realtor Beau Disbrow answered the phone, he didn't expect the call to come from the US Secret Service. As reported by Bloomberg, his short-term rentals usually cater to glacier-bound tourists or business travellers, not presidential security teams. But with President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin set to meet in Alaska on Friday, the agency needed housing fast.
'Most of my short-term rentals were booked, but I did manage to put some of them into one home," Disbrow told Bloomberg. The request didn't stop there — soon after, the Russian consulate in New York called with the same query. With no vacancies left, Disbrow referred them to a friend with empty furnished homes.
Bloomberg reports that the lone Secret Service agent permanently assigned to Alaska began mobilising hundreds of reinforcements the moment Trump announced the summit last week. The operation, according to four people familiar with the planning, turned into an all-out sprint — condensed into just seven days. Unlike overseas visits, the US location allows the Secret Service to move weapons, communications gear, and medical equipment without foreign restrictions. Still, Alaska's remote geography and limited infrastructure have created logistical hurdles.
Anchorage's shortage of hotel rooms and rental cars has forced the agency to fly in SUVs from the lower 48 states, Bloomberg said. The meeting will take place at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska's largest military installation, a Cold War–era listening post located less than 1,000 miles from Russia. The base's controlled airspace, fortified gates, and instant military support make it an ideal — and secure — venue.
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy told Bloomberg Television that holding the summit on the base eases pressure on the city during peak tourist season. Still, the scale of the operation is immense. Protocol rules require a perfectly mirrored security setup for both leaders — from the number of armed guards to the placement of translators. Neither side will ride in the other's vehicles or open the other's doors, Bloomberg noted. Even the size of secure 'hold rooms" for each leader is under negotiation.
With Russian approval for the final security plan still pending, downtown Anchorage is already transformed. Hotels are fully booked, rental car lots emptied for motorcades, and agents are stationed at intersections, coffee shops, and parking garages. Alaska state troopers and local police are integrated into routes mapped down to each turn.
Trump has characterised the meeting as a step toward ending Russia's war in Ukraine, hinting that a territorial swap could be part of a deal. Putin, according to Bloomberg, has praised Trump's mediation efforts and floated economic cooperation and a new arms control treaty as possible outcomes.
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First Post
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How the Trump-Putin talks in Alaska could unfold
US President Donald Trump will host Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska for a high-stakes meeting to discuss a possible ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv, without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy present. Notably, Zelenskyy has already said he will not accept a deal that involves giving away Ukrainian territory, so what could happen during the meeting? This will be Trump's first face-to-face meeting with Putin in his second term. Reuters/File Photo If you consider the history of Donald Trump's public relationship with Vladimir Putin, you won't be surprised that there's a fair amount of concern in Ukraine and among Ukraine's European allies at what might happen when the two meet in Alaska today for their summit. While it'll be their first face-to-face meeting of Trump's second presidency, the pair has met previously on six occasions and, as we know, spoken fairly frequently over the phone. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The first face-to-face meeting was at the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017, just months into Trump's first term. The pair spent two hours of a scheduled 35-minute meeting talking about all things from Syria to North Korea. It was constructive and cordial, they said. Later they talked during a summit dinner in an exchange that was only witnessed by Putin's interpreter, the nature of which was not reported. They enjoyed a brief encounter at that year's Apec conference in Vietnam, sharing a handshake but having no formal discussion. The first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin was at the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017. Reuters/File Photo The following year they met for the now notorious summit in Helsinki, where Putin denied US intelligence reports that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and Trump said he had no reason to doubt Putin's word. The two spent two hours closeted with only their interpreters present. Trump's high spirits were exhibited by a couple of winks he gave the Russian president during their public exchanges. There was a brief exchange at the G20 summit later that year in Buenos Aires, but this was at the height of the justice department's investigation into election meddling into Russian election interference. It was a subject Trump returned to when they met at the 2019 G20 summit in Osaka, where Trump seemed to grin as he told Putin: 'Don't meddle in the election.' As a result, as Stefan Wolff puts in, 'expectations are low and anxieties are high' in the run-up to the meeting. Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham, sees a number of possible pitfalls for Ukraine in the meeting. Trump has billed the summit as 'a feel-out meeting' at which he will get a sense of whether it's possible to agree a ceasefire. But the US president and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have reportedly already sketched out scenarios whereby Putin is offered Ukrainian territory in return for a ceasefire. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The Ukrainian president won't be there, of course. But he has already said that he won't accept a deal which imposes a giveaway of Ukrainian territory (which would, in any case, violate his country's constitution). Wolff believes this would give Putin the opportunity to paint Zelensky as the problem – the man denying the US president his Nobel peace prize. On the other hand is the possibility that Trump will persuade Putin to agree to a three-way with Zelensky but without other European leaders. Wolff believes this brings with it the danger that Putin (who as a longtime Soviet intelligence officer would have plenty of experience at this sort of thing) would be able to manipulate the meeting into the sort of blow-up between Trump and Zelensky we saw in their disastrous meeting at the White House in February. These are clearly all concerns shared by Ukraine's European allies, so much so that they convened an emergency virtual conference on August 13. Zelensky, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and an array of other European leaders warned Trump and his vice-president, J.D. Vance, that Ukrainian and European interests must be protected at the summit. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The main worry, writes Michelle Bentley, a professor of international relations at Royal Holloway University of London, will be that while Putin's position is clear, Trump's is not. Putin wants a deal that recognises Russian ownership of Crimea and the various provinces in Ukraine's east that his military already occupies, including land it has not managed to take by force. He wants to prevent Ukraine joining Nato and wants the country to demilitarise. Trump, by contrast, wants to do a deal. Partly because he has said he will do one. And partly because there is economic benefit to be had for the US in repairing relations with Russia. Bentley also worries that the US president has a track record of support for the Russian president and the mere fact that the pair are getting together for a summit on equal terms effectively brings to an end the years of Russia's diplomatic isolation in the west. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD There is a possibility that Trump will persuade Putin to agree to a three-way with Zelensky, but without other European leaders. Reuters/File Photo What to expect? What will also be worrying Kyiv and its allies is Trump's singular foreign policy style, which is notably transactional. It may be the US president's background in real estate asserting itself (and it's no coincidence that his envoy to Russia and at times to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Steve Witkoff, is from a similar background). Just recently, Trump hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Oval Office for a meeting at which they signed a deal to end the decades of conflict between their two countries. Integral to the deal is the development of a new corridor through Armenia to link Azerbaijan with its enclave of Nakhchivan. Previously known as the Zangezur corridor, the link will have the name the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. Trump is by no means the first US president to link commerce or economic incentives with diplomacy, writes Patrick Shea, an expert in international relations and global governance at the University of Glasgow. But Trump's style is somewhat different, he writes. The president's deals often skirt dangerously close to the wind in terms of international law, the recent tariff policies being an example. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Foreign governments, meanwhile, are first learning that such sweeteners can be effective in dealing with this administration. As is flattery. So it's notable that, following Trump's warning to Putin to get serious about doing a deal, the Russian president has been fulsome in his praise of Trump's 'sincere efforts' to bring about peace in Ukraine. Trump has made a big fuss about Putin coming to see him in Alaska, a US state. He sees that as courtesy on the part of the Russian leader. But there are many who think holding the summit in a territory that one belonged to Russia means the whole meeting has a subtext that territorial sovereignty is not absolute and that it does change hands from time to time. Here's a brief history of Alaska from William L. Iggiagruk Hensley of the University of Alaska Anchorage, a former member of the state legislature. Munich Agreement of 1938 A major international summit, where an aggressor is threatening to invade another country with the prospect of a major European war? We've been here before. The summit was at Munich in September 1938, the aggressor was Germany and the country at threat was Czechoslovakia. And like the impending Alaska summit where Ukraine has not been invited, when the British and French leaders visited Adolf Hitler to talk peace, Czechoslovakia was not in the room. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The example of Munich 1938 doesn't fill one with a great deal of confidence for Ukraine's future security, writes Tim Luckhurst, a historian of the second world war. Luckhurst recounts the events leading up to Munich, at which British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, and his French counterpart, Édouard Daladier, agreed that Germany would be allowed to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, with no involvement of the Czech leader, Edvard Beneš. It would be 'peace in our time', boasted Chamberlain. It wasn't even peace for a year. What's happening in Israel? To Israel, where this weekend there is likely to be one of the biggest mass protests and general strikes in the country's history on Sunday, August 17. Huge numbers of people are expected to turn out in protest at the Netanyahu government's failure to secure the release of the remaining October 7 hostages and the prime minister's plan to launch a fresh offensive to take and occupy Gaza city despite the risk to the remaining hostages' lives. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Benjamin Netanyahu's position as prime minister is looking far from secure. The next election is due in October 2026, but John Strawson – an expert in Israeli politics at the University of East London – believes a new poll may be held much sooner than that. Netanyahu's parliamentary coalition is becoming more shaky as his ultra-orthodox supporters quit the government in protest at the government's decision to scrap the exemption from conscription enjoyed by orthodox Israeli students. But whether this will bring any relief to Palestinians is doubtful. Recent polling suggests that while there is huge support for an end to the war, this doesn't translate into public backing for a two-state solution. Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Indian Express
2 minutes ago
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In Kyiv, disheartened Ukrainians wary ahead of Trump-Putin summit
As President Donald Trump prepared to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, Ukrainians were watching warily, fearful the US leader could sell Kyiv out in his bid for a quick deal with Moscow. The American leader, who has set his sights on securing a truce in Russia's 3-1/2-year-old war in Ukraine, agreed last week to hold the first US-Russian summit since 2021, abruptly ending Western attempts to isolate the Kremlin leader. Polls by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology show Ukrainians overwhelmingly want a negotiated settlement to end the fighting, but would also oppose any truce secured with crushing concessions. Half a dozen Ukrainians interviewed by Reuters on Kyiv's central square said they were not optimistic ahead of the summit. Some said they worried that Kyiv's interests would not be taken into account. 'I don't trust Trump. He says one thing today, another tomorrow. The day after tomorrow – another thing, in five days – something else. Therefore, I have no faith in him,' 47-year-old accountant Anna Sherstniova said. Tetiana Harkavenko, a 65-year-old cleaner, predicted the fighting would rage on after the summit. 'Nothing good will happen there, because war is war, it will not end. The territories – we're not going to give anything to anyone.' Trump has said any deal to end the war will require territorial concessions by both sides, and that he would like to see a follow-up meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Liubomyr Yurtsiv, 26, a technician, said he expected little would change after the meeting. 'Most likely, the outcome won't be positive,' he added. Valerii Kucherenko, a 31-year-old war veteran, had a similarly pessimistic take, speaking to Reuters at the pizzeria he set up in the town of Bila Tserkva outside the capital. Kucherenko lost both his hands to injuries that he sustained while storming a Russian position on the eastern front in 2023. 'I hope for peace on our terms, but we're all adults and understand it's not that simple. Putin and Trump may reach an agreement, but it will not be in our favour. This scenario will not suit us,' he said. 'We are Ukrainians, and we will defend our rights to the very end.'
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First Post
2 minutes ago
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Yulia Navalnaya presses for prisoner release before Putin–Trump talks
Exiled Russian opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya has urged Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to strike a deal for the release of Russian and Ukrainian political prisoners. Speaking ahead of their Alaska meeting, she called for the liberation of activists, journalists, and civilians detained for opposing the Ukraine conflict. Exiled Russian opposition member Yulia Navalnaya urged Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on Friday to reach an agreement to liberate Russian and Ukrainian political prisoners detained by Moscow for speaking out against the conflict. Navalnaya, whose husband Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison last year, spoke in a video message posted on social media hours before the two leaders were scheduled to meet in Alaska to discuss ways to stop the Ukraine conflict. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'You must take an irreversible step, something that cannot be undone,' Navalnaya said, addressing both Putin and Trump. 'Free Russian political activists and journalists. Free Ukrainian civilians. Free those imprisoned for anti-war statements and social media posts,' she said. Trump and Putin have previously reached agreements to liberate Russian and American citizens imprisoned in the other nation. Last year, Trump's predecessor Joe Biden orchestrated a massive prisoner swap in which two US journalists and many Russian opposition members were released in return for a number of alleged Russian undercover operatives apprehended in Europe. Russia has punished hundreds of people who opposed its invasion of Ukraine. In the days following its decision to send soldiers into neighbouring countries, Moscow enacted severe military censorship regulations that prohibited any criticism of the army or the dissemination of information from non-government sources. According to Kyiv, thousands of Ukrainian people have been jailed in Russia and regions of Ukraine controlled by Russia's troops since the invasion in February 2022.
