How the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska spawned the Kremlin’s myth of the ‘spirit of Anchorage’ — and why it collapsed

Putin’s meeting with Trump in August 2025 gave rise to a new term in the arsenal of Russian diplomacy and propaganda: the “spirit of Anchorage.” The claim was that during the Russian president’s visit to Alaska, Russia and the United States had reached certain agreements on peace in Ukraine — agreements that were directly shaping events on the front and in diplomacy. For a full year, Russian politicians and pro-Kremlin journalists insisted that following the “spirit of Anchorage” was the key to breaking the deadlock in peace talks. After Putin rejected Zelensky’s public peace proposal — and as a fuel crisis triggered by Ukrainian strikes intensified — it became definitively clear that the “spirit of Anchorage” had evaporated. Trump acknowledged as much, and within days so did Putin. Writing exclusively for Meduza, political scientist and researcher at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs Sergejs Potapkins explains how the “spirit of Anchorage” came into being — and why it lasted as long as it did.

‘No deal until there’s a deal’

Russia and Europe watched Donald Trump’s campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours with equal hope — but with diametrically opposite expectations. Moscow anticipated that Kyiv would be forced into capitulation. Europe wondered what card up Trump’s sleeve might compel Putin to stop the aggression.

By July 2026, both sets of expectations had proved illusory. But the Trump-Putin meeting in Anchorage was the moment when that illusion briefly took on a life of its own.

The preparations for Putin’s visit to Alaska unfolded in an extremely contentious atmosphere. They were preceded by special envoy Steve Witkoff’s trip to Moscow on August 6, 2025. After his conversation with Putin, Washington came away believing the Kremlin was prepared to discuss a “land for peace” deal. European leaders received varying accounts: first, that Putin was willing to withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in exchange for recognition of Russian control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions; then, that the discussion involved only minor territorial concessions by Ukraine.

According to Reuters, the State Department made no transcript of Witkoff’s meeting with Putin — which meant the Anchorage summit rested, from the very start, on nothing more than oral understandings.

The discussion of Ukraine’s territorial fate began between Washington and Moscow without Kyiv. Many Western governments feared a deal that the United States and Russia would strike at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty. Before the Alaska summit, European leaders pressed Trump to uphold key conditions: no territorial concessions without Ukraine, no changes to borders by force.

The summit itself moved quickly — and ended with great symbolism but little substance. Putin received a red carpet, a warm welcome on American soil, and a conversation with the “leader of the democratic world,” but no final document followed, or even joint answers to journalists’ questions.

Trump said there was “no deal until there’s a deal,” while simultaneously speaking of progress and agreement on many points. Putin spoke of “understandings” and “the root causes of the conflict” — and warned Kyiv and Europe not to “try to derail the emerging progress.”

For Washington, the outcome apparently looked like a discussion of a possible peace formula with no commitments attached. Moscow presented it as a near-final agreement. For Russian propaganda, Anchorage became a convenient construct precisely because of its ambiguity: with no signed text, one could invoke not the letter but the “spirit.” That spirit was born in the void between “no deal” and “there is an understanding.”

From ‘impetus’ to ‘spirit’ to ‘understandings’

At first, Russian officials spoke not of a spirit but of the “impetus of Anchorage.” On October 8, 2025, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that this “powerful impetus” had been largely exhausted.

Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov disagreed the following day. Then, on October 10, Dmitry Peskov used the now-familiar formula for the first time: “From the standpoint of the spirit of Anchorage.” Ten days later the term had fully crystallized: Ryabkov quickly changed his position and said there was no alternative to the “spirit of Anchorage” and that any settlement had to be sought within that framework.

The phrase thus ceased to be a metaphor for the pleasant atmosphere of the summit and became an instrument of propaganda and diplomacy. For a domestic audience, the “spirit” functioned as a symbol of progress in peace talks — at a time when no progress whatsoever was being made.

“The understandings reached in Anchorage are foundational, and it is precisely those understandings that can move the settlement process forward and allow for a breakthrough,” Peskov said in February 2026, many months after the Alaska meeting.

Russian propaganda also tried to load the “spirit of Anchorage” with more complex content — invoking Russia’s return from isolation and a deep partnership between Putin and Trump. “In Anchorage, we accepted the United States’ proposal. If you want to put it in man-to-man terms, they made an offer, we accepted it, so the matter should be settled. […] Having accepted their proposal, we’ve effectively fulfilled the task of resolving the Ukrainian issue and can move on to full-scale, broad, mutually beneficial cooperation,” Lavrov said.

Later — when Trump turned his attention to the war with Iran and once again grew disillusioned with Putin — the “spirit of Anchorage” unexpectedly became a convenient way to exit a partnership that had never materialized. Because no one could say precisely what the United States and Russia had agreed to, Moscow was free to accuse Washington publicly of failing to honor the commitments reached in Alaska.

In early June 2026, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new military aid package for Ukraine worth $400 million, Lavrov began publicly laying the groundwork for that retreat: “I very much hope that the experience of previous failures — when the West refused to honor agreements it had itself endorsed — will not be repeated with respect to the Alaska agreements. But so far, to our great regret, our American partners show no interest in this whatsoever.”

Ryabkov, who had already found himself in an awkward position over Alaska, chose to speak out again: he disavowed the “spirit of Anchorage,” saying he had never used such a phrase, and accused the United States and the West of departing from the “understandings of Anchorage.” Earlier, in May, Ushakov had also claimed to know nothing of the “spirit of Anchorage” and to have never used the phrase.

On June 26, Lavrov said Moscow had agreed to the American proposals on Ukraine — brought by Witkoff — even before Alaska, and that denying the existence of “agreements” therefore looked in bad faith from Russia’s perspective. Rubio responded that there had been a proposal in Anchorage but no agreement, and that if there had been an agreement, the war would already be over.

The final word came from Putin himself. Commenting on Rubio’s remarks, he confirmed that there had been no formal agreements between the United States and Russia in Alaska, that no documents had been signed, and that the two sides had discussed only the possibilities for ending the Ukrainian crisis.

From a chance at peace, the “spirit” had transformed into a surrogate for agreements that no one had negotiated or signed — a diplomatic myth holding that America had accepted Russia’s terms.

The “spirit of Anchorage” died not because anyone violated agreements that had been reached, but because those agreements had never existed. And the more insistently Moscow tried to invoke the spirit, the faster it dissipated.