Almost 10 years after his last appearance on the American soil, Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to return to the United States to meet with Donald Trump on August 15. The two men must be in the state of Alaska. A not so surprising choice.
Alaska, nicknamed the state of the “last border”, is the largest in the United States. It extends more than 1.5 million square kilometers, twice and a half in Texas. A large territory to horcajadas on the Arctic Circle, which before belonging to the Americans, was a possession of the Russian Tsaries.
Assignment to Americans in 1867
In 1867, Russia sold Alaska to the United States for $ 7.2 million. According to the revision of geopolitical conflicts, after the defeat of the Crimean War in front of a coalition of European powers in which the United Kingdom appears, the Russian Empire prefers to separate from this territory too difficult to defend in the case of the invasion of the British, then present in Canada. The United States and Russia become very close neighbors, separated only by the Bering Strait.
Common border
At the closest point, between the two Russian Diomède Grande Islands and Little Diomeda de Alaskian, the two states are distant to less than 5 kilometers.
“Russia and the United States are nearby neighbors, with a common border,” said Mr. Ochakov, a Kremlin diplomatic advisor, cited on Friday, August 8 by Russian agencies, qualifying Alaska’s choice for Trump-Poutin meeting “quite logical.”
Cultural proximity
Historical and geographical proximity is also cultural. As the official state site recalls: “Alaska has many Russian historical buildings. There are active Russian orthodox churches in some 80 Alaska communities, many of which still use the old Russian Orthodox calendar and celebrate Christmas on January 7, according to the western calendar.”
On the Russian side, Alaska’s symbolism is, therefore, perhaps of a completely different order, since Michael McFaul, American ambassador to Russia advances from 2012 to 2014, progresses: X:
“Trump has chosen to welcome Putin in a part of the former Russian Empire. I wonder if he knows that Russian nationalists claim that the loss of Alaska, just like that of Ukraine, was an injustice for Moscow that must be corrected.”
But to the symbols are added economic considerations. “Alaska and the Arctic are areas where the economic interests of our two countries overlap and there are possibilities of large -scale projects of mutually advantageous projects,” says Iouri Ochakov, however, remembering that discussions between Russian and American presidents would be related above all to Ukraine.
In Donald Trump, “without a doubt there is at the top of the list the opportunity to exploit the hydrocarbon deposits of the Russian North, the Russians do not have the capabilities (…). Donald Trump must feel that there is a business opportunity to do there,” conjectures on their part of Ulrich Bounat, geopolitical analyst in BFMTV.
IPC arrest warrant
The election is also strategic: the United States does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, the CPI has issued an international arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which complicates the movements of the Russian president, which must avoid as much as possible to enter the airspace of countries that wish to apply this arrest warrant.
Source: BFM TV
