United States President Donald Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will meet on Friday (15) in the American state of Alaska to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine. The meeting, scheduled to take place Elmendorf-Richardson Military Unit, located in the city of Anchorage, takes place in a territory that already belonged to Russia and was sold to the US in 1867, in a negotiation that changed the North Pacific Geopolitical map.
Alaska, separated from Russia by just 88 kilometers at the narrowest point of Bering Strait, was explored by Russian navigators from the eighteenth century, when the Great Tsar Pedro sent Danish Vitus Bering to map the coast. The region was rich in natural resources, especially litter-otter skins-one of the most valuable materials in international trade at that time-and was managed in 1799 by the so-called Russian American company, which established large colonies like Sitka, taken after confrontation with the native Tlingit people.
However, the distance of St. Petersburg – then Russian capital, the hostile climate, the difficulty of supply and the competition of British and Americans hunters and traders have made possession of the increasingly expensive territory. The situation worsened after the Crime War (1853-1856), in which Russia was defeated by an alliance between the United Kingdom, France and the Ottoman Empire, spending the equivalent of 160 million sterlin pounds.
With the decline trade trade and fearing that the United Kingdom could seize Alaska from Canada in a possible conflict, then Tsar Alexandre II decided to sell the region. The United States, in full expansion and interested in expanding its presence in the Pacific, accepted the proposal. On March 30, 1867, Secretary of State William Seward, during the government of Andrew Johnson – Democrat that succeeded Abraham Lincoln as 17th US President, closed the deal with Russian diplomat Eduard Stoeckl for $ 7.2 million.
At the time, part of the American press criticized the purchase, calling it “Seward madness” and describing Alaska as “impassable snow deserts” and “useless territory.” However, the discovery of gold in the place in 1896, and later oil reserves transformed the state into a vital strategic and economic asset for the US.
Today, Alaska is an important military base, an oil and gas extraction center, and a tourist destination that attracts various citizens and researchers from the world. For experts, the fact that Trump and Putin gather there carries a historical weight. Historian Pierce Bateman of the University of Alaska in Anchorage, highlighted New York Times that the American state is back in the central role in the geopolitical scenario. He recalled that the sale of Alaska was motivated by a conflict in Crimea – a region that just returned to the center of international disputes after being annexed by Russia in 2014, which was followed by Putin’s large -scale invasion against Ukraine in 2022.
After the invasion of Ukraine, outdoors with the phrase “Alaska is ours” were spread in Russia, signaling that the territory is still part of the imaginary of Moscow’s most nationalist political elite.
Now, more than 150 years after the transaction, the state that was once Russian colony will serve as a stage for the beginning of negotiations that can change both Russia’s future and that of all Europe.
