Ordinarily, I would be excited and pleased to have Alaska host a meeting between our president and a foreign head of state. But not with the planned meeting between President Trump and Russian “President” Putin.
Putin is a vicious murderer. He has ordered the murders of his political opponents, Russian journalists and tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians. Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine has caused the deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers.
It sickens me that we will host this evil man in our state, and that we will give him a propaganda platform for his lies. It sickens me more that he and President Trump will discuss a “peace proposal” for Ukraine without the participation of Ukrainians.
More than eighty years later, “Munich” is still shorthand for Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler by letting him annex part of Czechoslovakia in return for a worthless promise of peace. I hope that “Alaska” won’t become another shorthand for appeasement of a ruthless, cynical dictator.
— Gunnar Knapp, Anchorage
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