Donald Trump appeared to confuse geography and history on Monday, saying on television that he planned to meet Vladimir Putin “in Russia” on Friday for their much-anticipated, high-stakes summit. It was the latest in a series of verbal slip-ups by the US president – though had he made it a century and a half earlier, it would have been true.
Alaska, with Novo-Arkhangelsk as its regional capital, remained part of the Russian empire under Tsar Alexander II until its sale to the US in 1867. When Putin’s jet touches down in Alaska, he will be greeted by traces of Russia’s former presence. From the wild, rugged shores of Baranof Island to Anchorage, the state’s largest city, Russian Orthodox churches with their distinctive onion-shaped domes still dot the landscape.
Russia’s foothold in Alaska began not with armies, but fur. In the mid-18th century, merchants and adventurers pushed east across Siberia, spurred by the promise of lucrative sea otter pelts. By the 1780s, Catherine the Great had authorised the creation of the Russian-American Company, granting it a monopoly over trade and governance in the territory.
Alexander Baranov, a hard-driving merchant, consolidated Russia’s hold on the region in the late 18th century, expanding settlements and ruthlessly suppressing resistance, most famously from the native Tlingit, who gave him the grim nickname “No Heart”.
Russian Orthodox priests soon followed, establishing missions and building churches. In New Archangel (now Sitka), they raised St Michael’s Cathedral, its green dome rising against a backdrop of glaciers, still anchoring the town’s view, on the same site more than 150 years later.
But by the mid-19th century, the Russian empire had come to see Alaska as more of a liability than an asset, and began quietly seeking a buyer. In the wake of its humiliating defeat in the Crimean war, the territory had become a drain on St Petersburg’s finances, compounded by mounting fears over Britain’s expanding naval presence in the Pacific.
In a letter to a friend in July 1867, Eduard de Stoeckl, the Russian envoy in Washington and chief negotiator of the sale, admitted: “My treaty has met with strong opposition … but this stems from the fact that no one at home has any idea of the true condition of our colonies. It was simply a matter of selling them, or watching them being taken from.”
The sale of Alaska emerged as a rare diplomatic win-win: for Russia, a way to recoup cash, gain a new, emerging ally across the Atlantic and sidestep a potential conflict with Britain; for the US, an opportunity to forestall European encroachment and assert its growing influence in the Pacific.
Still, when the Russian empire agreed the sale in 1867, few on either side of the Pacific saw it at first as an outright triumph….
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/12/russia-alaska-history-usa-trump-putin-summit
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After the truth-shower 