T
wo details from the brief yet fateful Trump-Putin summit in Alaska on Friday, August 15, shed light on the mindset of the two main figures and the geopolitical shift taking place in its wake: the sweatshirt worn by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov upon arriving in Anchorage, and the way President Donald Trump addressed his Russian counterpart by his first name, "Vladimir."
Lavrov's choice to wear a travel sweatshirt emblazoned with the Soviet Union's initials in Cyrillic may have been a reminder to Ukraine that, until 1991, it belonged to the union of 15 Soviet republics dominated by Russia – a fact that Moscow's war since 2014 reminds it of daily. Above all, the gesture expressed nostalgia for the grand Soviet-American summits, when Moscow and Washington presided over a bipolar world. That era shaped both Lavrov and Vladimir Putin: Lavrov as a diplomat, Putin as a KGB officer. The Alaska summit was a chance to relive it. Trump gave them that opportunity, at least in terms of imagery.
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