Putin and Trump shake hands ahead of Alaska summit
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Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Posturing over peace: What Trump and Putin's meeting was really about
Friday's summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin came together with all the finesse that we've come to expect from the US president and his administration. The pomp kicked off with Putin, a man who orders the bombing of Ukrainian cities every night, stepping onto a red carpet at an Alaskan air base that largely exists to keep an eye on his country. Historically, teams from the White House spend weeks or months putting these kinds of meetings together. There are extensive security checks, detailed agendas and countless negotiations about the optics and curation to ensure that no one gets the upper hand. When I worked at the White House, I was part of the team that planned the 2023 meeting between US president Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, which took months of detailed work. Yet this summit came about over the course of a couple of days. After Trump announced a unilateral ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, Putin shelled Kyiv to demonstrate how little the words of a foreign leader mean to him. I was in Kyiv that night, watching the drones and missiles strike civilian apartments – a brutal reminder of the human cost of Putin's imperial ambitions. The options for the summit's location were limited due to Putin having an arrest warrant out against him from the International Criminal Court and Trump being a convicted felon. Few countries were willing to grant the meeting any diplomatic legitimacy, and many wouldn't allow one or both leaders into the country at all. Loading And so that left Alaska, a former Russian territory purchased by the United States in 1867, at an air base built to monitor Russian airspace and its massive nuclear arsenal, and respond to threats coming from across the Pacific. I've worked on plenty of stops at the Elmendorf-Richardson base. Usually, it is where a US official stops to refuel their plane on the way to a destination in Asia. It's not typically the site of diplomatic negotiations. And it showed. Though the tarmac photos were impressive, the pipe-and-drape walls around storage rooms gave the feel of an underfunded campaign stop in the last venue available in town.
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
Posturing over peace: What Trump and Putin's meeting was really about
Friday's summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin came together with all the finesse that we've come to expect from the US president and his administration. The pomp kicked off with Putin, a man who orders the bombing of Ukrainian cities every night, stepping onto a red carpet at an Alaskan air base that largely exists to keep an eye on his country. Historically, teams from the White House spend weeks or months putting these kinds of meetings together. There are extensive security checks, detailed agendas and countless negotiations about the optics and curation to ensure that no one gets the upper hand. When I worked at the White House, I was part of the team that planned the 2023 meeting between US president Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, which took months of detailed work. Yet this summit came about over the course of a couple of days. After Trump announced a unilateral ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, Putin shelled Kyiv to demonstrate how little the words of a foreign leader mean to him. I was in Kyiv that night, watching the drones and missiles strike civilian apartments – a brutal reminder of the human cost of Putin's imperial ambitions. The options for the summit's location were limited due to Putin having an arrest warrant out against him from the International Criminal Court and Trump being a convicted felon. Few countries were willing to grant the meeting any diplomatic legitimacy, and many wouldn't allow one or both leaders into the country at all. Loading And so that left Alaska, a former Russian territory purchased by the United States in 1867, at an air base built to monitor Russian airspace and its massive nuclear arsenal, and respond to threats coming from across the Pacific. I've worked on plenty of stops at the Elmendorf-Richardson base. Usually, it is where a US official stops to refuel their plane on the way to a destination in Asia. It's not typically the site of diplomatic negotiations. And it showed. Though the tarmac photos were impressive, the pipe-and-drape walls around storage rooms gave the feel of an underfunded campaign stop in the last venue available in town.
Sky News AU
5 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Donald Trump makes Vladimir Putin ‘jealous' after ‘flexing' America's military assets
Sky News host James Morrow examines the 'little military flex' US President Donald Trump exercised when he met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss Ukraine in Alaska. 'Yes, a nicely timed B2 fly over there – Putin, I'm sure, would have been quite jealous of the hardware,' he said. 'Russia, of course, has nothing like that sort of kit.' Mr Morrow said Mr Putin's encounter with the American media during his visit left him looking like 'sleepy Joe'.
