People show their support for Ukraine outside the Government Hill gate prior to the summit with President Donald Trump and Russia President Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (Bill Roth / ADN) [ed. Liberals! lol!]
Supporters of Donald Trump wave signs on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025 in Midtown. (Bob Hallinen for ADN). [ed. Whoa. Well, it is a pretty red state.]
Several hundred protesters gathered along the Seward Highway near Northern Lights Boulevard on August 14, 2025, to protest President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Marc Lester / ADN)
by By Iris Samuels, Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News | Read more:
Additional image: Marc Lester
[ed. So, what do we know now about how things actually went down in Anchorage. Hell if I know. And... what about that Epstein guy everyone was so worked up about last week?! Was all this just convenient and reciprocal diversion tactics (for both)? See also: Trump leaves Alaska summit with Putin empty-handed after failing to reach a deal to end Ukraine war (ADN). Update: a few more sign wavers:]
[ed. See also: The Power of the Trump-Putin Presidential Photo Op (NYT):]
The two men clasped hands, and then strode to Mr. Trump’s limo, in complementary dark suits — single-breasted, two-button — matching white shirts and coordinating ties (red for Mr. Trump, burgundy for Mr. Putin), giving the impression of kindred spirits: just two statesmen meeting on the semi-neutral ground of an airport tarmac to go talk cease-fire, their respective planes looming in the background.
That’s the picture that was caught by the waiting cameras, and those are the photos that have gone around the world to accompany reports of the nonproductive meeting.
In the absence of an actual resolution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they have become the takeaway. And that, said both President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, even before the meeting, was Mr. Putin’s goal in the first place.
“He is seeking, excuse me, photos,” Mr. Zelensky said. “He needs a photo from the meeting with President Trump.”
Why? Because whatever happened afterward, a photo could be publicly seen — and read — as an implicit endorsement.
After all, the Russian president has been a virtual pariah in the West since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine; accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Whether or not Mr. Trump was tough with him behind the closed doors of their meeting room — whether or not their talks were, as Mr. Trump later said, “productive” — what has now been preserved for posterity is Mr. Putin’s admission back into the fold.
And of all current world leaders, the only one who understands, and embraces, the power of the image quite as effectively as Mr. Trump is Mr. Putin. Both men have made themselves into caricatures through costume and scenography, the better to capture the popular imagination.
