President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met Friday on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. Their planes both arrived Friday morning, and the two leaders met for about three hours behind closed doors before a roughly 20-minute press conference.
Alaksa Public Media Washington correspondent Liz Ruskin was there, crammed in with hundreds of journalists from around the world. Shortly after the press conference, she talked to Alaska News Nightly host Casey Grove by phone about what happened.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Casey Grove: Liz, what were your biggest takeaways from the press conference?
Liz Ruskin: Well, Casey, first of all, if there was progress toward peace for Ukraine, we don't know what it was. Putin said they reached some kind of agreement. Trump emphasized that there were things they didn't agree on.
Closer to home here in Alaska, President Putin spent a lot of time emphasizing the geographic proximity of Russia and Alaska and their common history, including Russian place names in Alaska. Putin said it's clear that U.S.-Russian investment and business cooperation has tremendous potential. And he said we see that Arctic cooperation is also very possible. It sounded like he was trying to sell us or sell President Trump on the benefits of what neighborliness and cooperation across the Bering Strait would look like.
Trump spoke for a little more than 3 minutes. Unlike Putin, he didn't mention Alaska. He said it was an extremely productive meeting, but there was no deal, and it was kind of a shock that the two leaders didn't take a single question.
CG: So, describe how the day unfolded for you before the press conference.
LR: Casey, this is such a strange way to be a witness to history. There were reporters traveling with both presidents, watching the landing and the greeting on the tarmac. We were not those reporters.
We were covering the press conference — and that only. So we were hundreds of reporters and videographers. We waited for hours and hours on the base, mostly in a media tent, sometimes in the room where the press conference was. Waiting. Waiting.
I listened to TV reporters doing their live shots and talking to their editors. I heard Russian, English, Arabic, German, Japanese. It was a lot of filling of time. Until all of a sudden, it wasn't. Once the press conference got started, it got super quiet and tense.
CG: Right, and like we said, I mean, a 20-minute press conference with no questions afterward. Anyways, I mean, we've talked about this a lot. There has been a ton of attention on this meeting from around the world. Do you think anyone's going to remember it even happened a few days from now?
LR: A few days from now? Yeah, I'd say so.
But in the long run of history, I don't think that's likely, since Putin and Trump didn't announce details of any progress toward a deal.
Alaskans might remember it a little longer, since it's pretty unusual to have world leaders drop in on our state for what was billed as a high stakes summit. And I guess we can hope that people around the world better understand the geography of Alaska's place on the globe. Maybe that's a tall order.
