Residents of Anchorage welcomed the Russian dictator with Ukrainian flags.
Several hundred people gathered for a rally in support of Ukraine in Anchorage, Alaska, where U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet today, August 16, Unian reports.
Protesters began assembling in the morning before Putin’s arrival, chanting pro-Ukrainian slogans and demanding that Russia return the 20,000 Ukrainian children abducted by Russian occupiers from the conflict zone.
The demonstrators were also outraged that Trump invited Putin to a meeting on American soil in Alaska, which had previously been Russian territory until it was sold to the U.S. in 1867.
“Ukraine and Alaska — never again Russia,” wrote Ostam Yarish, media advisor for the “Together for Ukraine” foundation, in a post on social media platform X.
Local rally organizers stated on social media that “Alaska is against tyranny” and called on supporters to “gather in Anchorage, Alaska, to protest against the international war criminal present here.”
“The decision to host Putin, a war criminal, on Alaskan soil is a betrayal of our history and the moral clarity demanded by the suffering of Ukraine and other occupied peoples,” reads a statement from the NGO Native Movement, which urges Trump not to make an agreement with Putin.
At the same time, a protest also took place in Kyiv on the day of the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, under the slogan “No land swaps — we demand a prisoner exchange!”
The event was organized by the civic organization Voiatskyi Vyzvil. Participants gathered on Sikorsky Street near the U.S. Embassy. Currently, about 50 people have arrived at the site.
Earlier, The Telegraph reported that the Alaska meeting could become the most dangerous moment of the war for Zelenskyy. According to the article’s author, Putin hopes that Friday’s meeting in Alaska will legitimize his occupation of Ukrainian territories.
“For Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the leader of Ukraine, this is perhaps the most dangerous moment of the war — a moment when the fate of his country could be decided at a meeting he was not invited to,” the publication emphasized.
At the same time, The New York Times noted that both Ukraine and Russia recognize the meeting with Trump as a major victory for Putin.
The summit is said to lift the Russian leader out of a diplomatic crisis and give him the opportunity to personally persuade the American president.
“Instead of sanctions, Putin got a summit. This is a huge victory for Putin, regardless of the summit’s outcome,” said Rygor Nizhnikov, a Russia expert and senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Relations.
