Trump, Putin to meet at military base, though White House hoped to avoid it – CNN

The place of the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is the Elmendorf-Richardson military base on the northern outskirts of the state's largest city, Anchorage. This was reported by CNN, citing two unnamed White House officials.

U.S. officials trying to find a venue for the meeting quickly discovered the main problem: summer is the peak tourist season in Alaska, and the possibilities for organizing such an event were very limited, CNN notes.

The summit organizers soon concluded that Anchorage was the only city in the state to host the meeting. And only the joint Elmendorf-Richardson base would meet security requirements, although the White House hoped to avoid the prospect of the Russian leader and his entourage being hosted at a US military base.

CNN also reports that when news of Trump and Putin's arrival reached "prominent Alaskans," some of them began to contact presidential officials with a proposal: could their home be one of the options? It is not known whether these offers reached White House officials, who called properties in Juneau, the state capital, as well as in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

According to people familiar with the matter, the Trump administration and the Kremlin decided on Alaska after extensive behind-the-scenes negotiations. There were few places that would have been suitable for such a meeting, especially given Putin's arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in 2023.

Given this fact, Russia has been avoiding the European direction – even cities like Vienna or Geneva, where US and Russian leaders have met since the Cold War.

Although Putin himself has called the United Arab Emirates a "perfectly acceptable" place, many in the White House were hoping to avoid another long trip to the Middle East after Trump's visit in May.

Thus, according to the interlocutors, it all came down to the fact that Hungary could be the only place to meet.

But, according to CNN, in the end, U.S. officials were "pleased and somewhat surprised" when the Russian dictator agreed to meet in Alaska, a U.S. state that was once part of the Russian Empire .

• on August 9, Trump announced that had agreed to meet with Putin in Alaska on August 15.
• On August 12, the US Federal Aviation Administration announced the temporary closure of airspace over the city of Anchorage on the day of the Trump-Putin meeting.
• A natural disaster is forecast for August 16 in Alaska due to the "imminent threat of catastrophic flooding" in the area of the capital Juneau.