Russia keeps citing a ‘spirit of Anchorage’ from last summer’s Trump–Putin summit, but that term exists only in Moscow’s vocabulary
Russian officials and state media have eagerly adopted the term “the spirit of Anchorage,” sometimes substituting “the Anchorage impulse” or “the Anchorage formula.” These phrases refer to a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025, at which the two leaders discussed prospects for ending the war in Ukraine. However, the summit concluded without any diplomatic breakthroughs, raising the question: Why is Moscow so committed to promoting a “spirit of Anchorage”?
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has described the “spirit” of the August 2025 summit as “a whole set of understandings” between Russia and the United States. He declined to elaborate, explaining that Moscow prefers to “conduct these conversations behind closed doors, rather than engage in any kind of public, megaphone diplomacy.”
Before Putin and Trump met in Alaska, White House special envoy Steve Witkoff visited the Kremlin for preliminary talks. Neither Russia nor the U.S. formally articulated any “understandings” at the time, but unofficial sources indicate that Putin laid out his conditions: Ukraine would surrender the entire Donbas, while Russia would maintain its claims to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions but halt its advance at the current front line in those areas.
By October 2025, the “Trump peace plan” began to take shape on the same basis: Russia would fully acquire the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, while the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions would be split along the line of contact. In all subsequent talks, negotiators agreed to postpone the territorial question and focus instead on security guarantees, Ukraine’s possible accession to NATO, and the status of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
From Moscow’s perspective, Russian territorial claims in Ukraine are clearly the main “understanding” in the “spirit of Anchorage.” Another key element is the Kremlin’s refusal to accept a ceasefire as a precondition for initiating peace talks. Ukraine and European leaders raised this demand both before Anchorage and on several occasions since, but Russia and the United States have pointedly ignored it.
It was against this backdrop that Russian diplomats started invoking the “spirit of Anchorage.” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov declared on October 8, 2025, that “the powerful momentum from Anchorage toward reaching agreements […] has been largely exhausted,” blaming Europeans and “proponents of fighting to the last Ukrainian.”
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Over the next two days, Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy adviser to the Russian president, publicly corrected Ryabkov; then Vladimir Putin himself weighed in. Both asserted that talks based on understandings reached in Anchorage were ongoing. On October 20, Ryabkov declared, “There’s no alternative to the ‘spirit of Anchorage.’”
On January 23, 2026, after yet another meeting with Witkoff, Ushakov said resolving the conflict was impossible without settling the territorial issue “according to the formula agreed upon in Anchorage.”
Earlier this month, citing an unnamed source close to the negotiating process, the newspaper Vedomosti added another item to the supposed arrangements regarding territorial matters and a ceasefire: “establishing broader cooperation with the U.S., including economic ties.” In other words, this would mean lifting sanctions on Russia and ending its diplomatic isolation in the West.
Furthermore, the Russian side’s approach to negotiations makes another “understanding” readily apparent: Russia and the United States should be the ones negotiating; Ukraine is more the subject of discussion than an active party, and Europe should play no role at all. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made this view explicit in a statement on February 9:
In essence, we are told that the Ukrainian problem needs to be resolved. Well, in Anchorage, we accepted the U.S. proposal. If we’re being honest about it — if we’re handling this like men — they made the offer, and we agreed, so the problem should be settled. […] Whatever they’re saying in Ukraine or Europe doesn’t matter; we can see perfectly well the rabid Russophobia of most E.U. regimes, with very few exceptions. What was important to us was the U.S. position. Consequently, having accepted their proposals, we appear to have fulfilled the objective of resolving the Ukrainian question and moving toward comprehensive, broad, mutually beneficial cooperation.
In practice, however, everything appears to be the opposite: new sanctions are being imposed, and attacks are being conducted against tankers, as you know, on the high seas in violation of the Law of the Sea Convention. Efforts are underway to prevent India and our other partners from purchasing affordable Russian energy supplies.
In international politics, the concept of a place having a “spirit” invariably implies something beyond a set of specific agreements or “understandings.” For example, the “spirit of Yalta” is not merely what Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill agreed to at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. It represents the recognition of the Soviet Union as a great power and Western leaders’ willingness to grant it a significant sphere of influence without conflict.
Likewise, the “spirit of Helsinki” is not merely the 1975 Helsinki Accords on peace and cooperation in Europe, which were signed by both the USSR and the United States. It represents an idea — however utopian — of a world order based on universal respect for human rights and state sovereignty, on the peaceful resolution of disputes, and on building mutual trust to prevent wars.
The same is true for the “spirit of Reykjavik” — it is not simply the outcome of the 1986 meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland’s capital. This is particularly true given that there were no practical results: the two leaders had intended to reach an agreement on nuclear disarmament but failed to do so. Still, the summit’s “spirit” — the idea of abandoning the doctrine of mutually assured destruction — persisted.
Russian diplomats likely see in the Anchorage “understandings” something more than positions on specific issues in a Russia-Ukraine settlement. Moscow seems to believe that the summit established new principles for resolving international problems in general, though the Kremlin has declined to explain what this means.
The difficulty, however, is that “the spirit of Anchorage” or anything like it has never entered the U.S. diplomatic vocabulary. Trump and his administration still prefer to speak of “deals” in various contexts (whether it’s the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or any other). For the Americans, the Anchorage summit remains just another stage in yet another round of negotiations for yet another deal.