Melania Trump wrote a personal letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin for President Donald Trump to hand-deliver during the Alaska summit. The two world leaders sat down together in Anchorage on Aug.

It was a welcome tailored for a close friend, not a war criminal, and it looked to the Ukrainians like their nightmare.

Last week’s summit in Anchorage raised familiar, if still unanswered, questions about Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin.

President Donald Trump’s high-profile meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin adjourned their brief summit Friday without announcing a breakthrough in negotiations to end Russia’s three-year-old invasion of Ukraine.

It only makes sense that we’ve met here, because our countries though separated by the ocean are close neighbors,” Putin said in Anchorage.

Here are 12 things to know about the historic, and controversial, summit. Anchorage’s military base: Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Trump landed at JBER at 10:20 a.m. Friday and Putin arrived shortly before 11 a.m. They’re scheduled to hold a news conference at the end of their summit and then fly out of Anchorage.

Trump has visited Alaska several times as president, pushed for expanded oil, gas and mining permits there, and even got funding for new polar icebreakers, a popular stance in a state he won with 54% of the vote in 2024.

Trump had earlier extended an invitation for the meeting at Putin's suggestion, but the leader has since been defensive. He has given a 25% chance that the talks might fail.

B-2 bomber and F-35s stage an impressive flyover watched by hundreds of thousands online as Trump and Putin meet in Anchorage.A U.S. Air Force B-2A Spirit

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to meet at the U.S. military base in Anchorage, Alaska on Friday.

When U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska on Friday, it will be the latest chapter in the 49th state’s long history with Russia — and with international tensions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “personally gifted” a Ural bike reportedly valued at $22,000 to a “random” man when he was in Alaska on 15 August to attend a summit with US President Donald Trump.