By Dmitriy Turlyun
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) -A flurry of superpower-style signalling from Washington and Moscow over the war in Ukraine heralded the first U.S.-Russian summit in four years, but on the ground in Alaska there was a mix of the bizarre, the peculiar and even moose and a bear.
Donald Trump wants Friday’s summit at a Cold War-era air force base to be the start of the end of the deadliest war in Europe since World War Two.
Vladimir Putin, ascendant in the war, has meanwhile offered the prospect of a possible deal to limit strategic nuclear weapons, which the Kremlin hopes would usher in a much broader discussion of U.S. and Russian global interests beyond Ukraine.
In Anchorage, nearly 5,000 miles (8,000 km), from the front lines of the war, Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, arrived in a sweatshirt with the old Soviet Union initials “USSR” (“СССР”) across the front.
A bear and a moose ambled across at least one live television feed.
The Kremlin press pool was housed in an Alaska Airlines Center, where a semi-open-plan room was subdivided by partitions and some reporters were seen making their own camp-style beds. They were fed for free at a nearby university campus, Russian reporters said.
Putin, flying eastwards from Moscow and then eastern Russia, and Trump, flying northwest, were due to meet at 11 a.m. (1900 GMT) in Anchorage, on Friday, according to the latest timings, though it was unclear if Putin would be late – as he often is.
The state, whose far western tip lies just 55 miles (90 km) from the Russian Far East, is homeland to indigenous peoples and was settled by Europeans including Russians from the 18th century. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867 and no Russian leader has visited before.
“I understand the historical moment. It’s kind of exciting,” said Russian-American Anchorage resident and former school teacher Galina Tomisser.
“I just want to hope and they say the hope dies last, so that there will be some fruitful results from this meeting, from this summit,” she told Reuters.
Different waves of emigrants from the former Soviet Union have settled in Alaska, including both Russians and Ukrainians.
Pro-Ukrainian protesters held up a large Ukrainian flag with the words “ALASKA STANDS WITH UKRAINE”.
“This is just grandstanding for Donald Trump,” said Anchorage resident Helen Sharratt, 65, and originally from England.
“He likes to look good and think he’s doing something, but he’s not doing anything. And meeting with Putin is, I mean, actually, I don’t know who’s worse in terms of making a deal and not actually adhering to it.”
At the Chilkoot Charlie’s bar in Anchorage a collection of Soviet and czarist memorabilia adorns the Russian room, including pictures of Vladimir Lenin and the last Tsar Nicholas II, who was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
On the other side of the world, in Moscow, matryoshka dolls featuring Putin and Trump were selling well.
In Ukraine, though, there was fear and apprehension about what Putin and Trump might agree to at a meeting to which Ukraine and its European backers were not invited.
“I don’t think anything good will come of it. There won’t be a positive outcome; the conflict will continue. At best, it will be a frozen conflict, nothing else,” Konstantyn Shtanko told Reuters in Kyiv.
(Reporting by Reuters in Anchorage, Moscow and KyivWriting by Guy FaulconbridgeEditing by Frances Kerry)
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