The historic summit Trump-Putin, at one step to take place near Romania. Alaska meeting backstage

The rapid planning of the summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has revealed an unexpected detail: the location of the meeting was chosen after intense negotiations in which Russia opposed any European destination. Even with options such as Hungary, a country where Prime Minister Viktor Orban is close to both leaders, on the table, the Kremlin preferred a trip to Alaska, a territory that once belonged to the Russian Empire, most likely to avoid Putin's possible arrest based on the mandate issued by the International Criminal Court in 2023.

US officials who have endeavored this weekend to identify and book a place for Friday's summit between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have quickly discovered a major problem: summer is the peak tourist season in Alaska, and the options available to host the two world leaders were extremely limited.

When some prominent inhabitants of Alaska have learned that Trump and Putin will arrive in the US state, some have begun to contact the US president with a proposal: Could their homes be an option? It is not clear whether these offers have ever reached the officials at the White House, who called the locations in Juneau, the state capital, as well as from Anchorage and Fairbanks.

The organizers of the summit have recently come to the conclusion that the only city in this huge state that offered viable options for Summit was Anchorage. And only Elmendorf-Richardson military base, which is on the northern periphery of the city, met the security requirements for this historic meeting, although the White House had hoped to avoid a visit from the Russian leader and his entourage in an American military base.

There will meet the two leaders on Friday, two white house officials said, according to CNN.

Russian and American officials are working on meeting details

The attempt to find a suitable place for the historical summit underlined the officials of the officials to establish the details of the meeting on Friday, the first meeting between the US and Russia leaders after more than four years.

The preparations are in all for the Friday summit, with American and Russian officials, hurrying to set up this major meeting. The high -ranking diplomats of the two countries, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, discussed “certain aspects of training”, according to the Moscow Foreign Ministry.

Usually, a high -stake summit with a US opponent is preceded by broad agenda and results negotiations. But Trump said he approaches the meeting as a “test” session, without expectations on how he will go. On Tuesday, the White House cataloged it as a “listening session”.

“The president feels that he has to look at the man standing on the other side of the table. He has to see him face to face. He has to listen to him in particular. I have to evaluate him looking at him,” said the head of American diplomacy, on Tuesday morning, in a radio interview with Sid Rosenberg, giving an explanation for the reason for the five year. the Kremlin leader.

European destination, excluded

The US and Russia have chosen Alaska as a place of the summit after long backstage negotiations, according to people familiar with the problem, notes CNN. There were few places suitable for the meeting, said the sources quoted by the American television, especially given the arrest warrant for war crimes on behalf of Putin by the International Criminal Court in 2023.

That is why Russia opposed a European destination, even in a city like Vienna or Geneva, where American and Russian leaders have met since the Cold War. While Putin proposed the United Arab Emirates as a “perfect” location, many inside the White House hoped to avoid another long trip to the Middle East after Trump's visit.

Finally, according to some sources, his attention directed to Hungary, whose prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is close to both Trump and Putin, and the United States, as possible host countries, according to two US officials.

US officials were satisfied and somewhat surprised when the Russian president accepted a meeting in the US – in a territory that was part of the Russian Empire, no less.

“A great victory for Putin”

“It seemed very respectful to me that the President of Russia comes to our country, instead of going to his country or even in a third country,” Trump said this week, while his team was in a hurry to complete the details of the summit.

Others were not so impressed.

“The only better place for Putin than Alaska would be if the summit took place in Moscow,” said Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, who quarreled with Trump during his first term. “So, I think the initial arrangement is a great victory for Putin.”

The last time an American president met Putin, the 2021 summit of President Joe Biden in Geneva, the date and place were announced three weeks before. But the planning between Russian and American officials started on Monday.

Mystery around the meeting

While US and Russian officials have held intense discussions to prepare the meeting at the negotiation table, since it was agreed last week, the meeting that determined this event remains a mystery. Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited Moscow last Wednesday for a meeting with Putin, who led to the decision to meet, although what Putin said in the meeting remains largely unknown.

European officials have spent much of the last week trying to set the parameters of the Putin-proposed peace agreement, but some have been frustrated by Witkoff's lack of clarity, a Real Estate and Old Developer.

Trump intends to listen to the opinions of European leaders in a virtual meeting on Wednesday, organized by the Germans, so that the president can find out their point of view before the Friday meeting. He promised that he would talk on the phone with them, together with the Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski, immediately after the summit is completed.

But Zelenski is not expected in Alaska for Summit, so any potential trilateral meeting is excluded for the moment.

Instead, Trump will spend at least part of the summit in a Tête-Tête meeting with Putin, the White House said on Tuesday, allowing the two to bear a discussion without being heard by anyone other than translators.

“It is part of the plan,” said Karoline Leavitt, the spokesman of the White House, when asked if the two presidents will meet in particular. “As for the other details and logistics aspects, I will let our team talk about it when they are established.”

How previous meetings between Trump and Putin went

It is not unusual for leaders to meet between four eyes with their counterparts, but the relationship between Trump and Putin has been subjected to intense attention. And during Trump's first term, even senior officials said they were sometimes not informed about what was discussed when the assistants were excluded.

In Trump's two previous meetings with Putin, both took place in the presence of translators, but without high -ranking assistants. After the German meeting, Trump would have asked his translator.

For his part, Putin spent his days before the meeting on Friday giving phones to his allies, including some who organized their own large Trump.

Among them was the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Kremlin said on Tuesday, who met Trump three times during his first term, but has not yet given up nuclear weapons.