Russia frames Alaska meeting as second Yalta Conference - ISW
Russian President Vladimir Putin (photo: Getty Images)
The Kremlin is using the Alaska summit to position Russia as a global power equal to the US, and Vladimir Putin as an equal to President Donald Trump, according to a report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
It is reported that on August 13, Russia’s lead negotiator and CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Kirill Dmitriev, hinted at the 1945 Yalta Conference between the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union. He claimed that the Yalta Conference won World War II and suggested that Putin and Trump are similarly preventing World War III.
Deputy Chair of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs Alexei Chepa reinforced the comparison between the upcoming Alaska summit and Yalta, stating that the US and Russia should talk to each other as friends.
The head of the Russian administration in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, declared that Trump should visit occupied Crimea to negotiate a new Yalta peace.
Several Russian media outlets also likened the Alaska summit to Yalta, claiming that people with real influence over global processes will be at the negotiation table in Alaska.
Fabricated victory
According to ISW experts, Russia’s comparisons of the Alaska summit on August 15 to the 1945 Yalta Conference are an attempt to conceal the power imbalance between the US and Russia and to portray Russia as having far stronger diplomatic, military, and economic positions than it actually does.
Analysts believe Russia is already trying to frame the mere fact of a Trump–Putin meeting as a victory and to create the perception that Russia is an equal partner to the US.
The Institute considers the comparisons between the two meetings inaccurate.
“Comparisons between the two meetings are also inaccurate because the 1945 Yalta Conference resulted in an agreement about post-war Europe, while Trump and other US officials have reiterated that the August 15 summit will not result in any US-Russia agreements about the end of the war in Ukraine,” ISW noted.
US–Russia Summit in Alaska
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting on August 15 in Anchorage, Alaska, aiming to agree on a ceasefire and outline basic approaches to ending the war.
According to media reports, Putin may propose recognizing some of the occupied territories as Russian in exchange for withdrawing troops from other occupied areas.
One likely scenario suggests that Ukraine would cede control of all of Donetsk and Luhansk regions to Russia, while Russian forces would fully withdraw from the currently occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
In this case, the occupied territories might not be legally recognized under Russian control, but only de facto for the time being.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has firmly rejected withdrawing Ukrainian forces from the two eastern regions in exchange for a ceasefire.
If the Alaska meeting proves productive, Trump is ready to hold a trilateral summit including Putin and Zelenskyy, which could take place as early as the end of next week.
