This is how Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan has described Vladimir Putin: “aggressive authoritarian,” “a mafia regime leader” and a “dictator.”
“Authoritarian regimes are testing the United States. Dictators like Vladimir Putin see through a lens of either strength or weakness, which is why I’ve long encouraged our senior military leaders to be ready and to respond with strength,” Sullivan wrote last year.
Sullivan and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski have long expressed wariness of Putin during their tenures in the U.S. Senate.
But Sullivan, an ally of President Donald Trump, has welcomed the prospect of Putin’s planned summit on Friday with Trump in Alaska, marking the Russian president’s first trip to the U.S. since 2015.
Putin is set to meet Trump on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a military installation on the north side of Anchorage.
Asked what message the Anchorage summit sends to foreign adversaries, Murkowski said Thursday that it sends “a mixed message.”
“Putin responds to strength,” Sullivan wrote in a statement to the Daily News on Wednesday, in response to questions on whether he was concerned about Putin being hosted on a U.S. military base.
“The fact that he has agreed to come to our country, after being threatened with massive U.S. sanctions, in a state that features critical elements of American power — over 100 5th generation fighters, a U.S. Army Airborne Division, and massive amounts of American energy — highlights for the world, particularly our adversaries, some of the most important strengths of our nation,” Sullivan wrote.
[When Trump and Putin meet in Anchorage, Alaska’s Ukrainians will be watching closely]
Sullivan planned to meet with Trump on JBER on Friday, his spokesperson Amanda Coyne said.
Murkowski, a regular Trump critic within the GOP, wrote in a statement last week that she remains “deeply wary of Putin and his regime.”
“Our U.S. Armed Forces are the most advanced and powerful military in the history of the world. I have complete confidence in the professionalism of our men and women in uniform, and I know they will keep our people safe and our operations secure during this summit,” Murkowski said in a written statement Thursday.
“While I hope this meeting brings us closer to the end of Russia’s illegal and deadly war, Ukraine must be part of any negotiated settlement. Ukraine is also a sovereign nation — there can be no resolution until they freely agree to the terms,” Murkowski added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who Murkowski met with when she traveled to Ukraine in 2023, will not be in Alaska for the summit. Trump on Thursday suggested the three could potentially meet at a later time, also in Alaska.
[Putin praises Trump’s efforts to end Ukraine war ahead of summit in Anchorage]
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Sullivan, a Marine Corps veteran, told NPR that he had been focused “relentlessly” on “the very significant Russian buildup of its military capabilities in the Arctic.”
“Just like they’re acting in Ukraine, they have increasingly increased military capabilities in the Arctic and increased aggressive actions. To me, the most important way you deal with Putin is not through talk. It’s through demonstrations of power,” Sullivan said in February 2022. “That’s the one thing he understands — he understands energy, he understands military power.”
Alaska’s U.S. senators have been staunch supporters of sending military aid to Ukraine, even as some of their Republican colleagues questioned the need for the aid. And earlier this year, both Sullivan and Murkowski refuted Trump’s false claim that Ukraine started war with Russia.
Any agreement involving Russia “should be guided by the old Ronald Reagan adage with the Soviet Union, ‘trust but verify,’” Sullivan said earlier this year.
In 2018, Sullivan and Murkowski were united in criticizing Trump, after he refused during a meeting with Putin in Helsinki to support the collective conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“Do I believe the professional and patriotic men and women of our intelligence community, including the Director of National Intelligence, or a mafia regime leader like Putin? It’s not even a close call,” Sullivan wrote at the time.
Along with Sullivan, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has told Alaska’s News Source he planned to meet Trump when he lands in Alaska on Friday morning.
In 2022, Dunleavy called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine an “unprovoked war.”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian aggression and barbarous invasion into Ukraine is–in the words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy–an attempt to drop ‘a new Iron Curtain.’ Russia’s attack on Ukraine is an attack on democracy,” Dunleavy wrote at the time.
Still, when Trump said last week that he planned to meet Putin in Alaska, Dunleavy said that “Alaska stands ready to host this historic meeting.”
Alaska’s lone U.S. House member, Republican Rep. Nick Begich III, who was elected last year, has largely embraced Trump’s position on the war in Ukraine.
“Do I believe that that peaceful resolution will be amenable to everyone? No, it’s not going to be. But I think that the people of Ukraine deserve an opportunity for peace,” Begich said in an address to the Legislature in February.
The Alaska Legislature, for its part, adopted in 2022 a resolution supporting Ukraine, calling the war an “unprovoked Russian invasion.”
