On the eve of what President Trump calls a “feel-out meeting” in Alaska with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president seems well aware of a no-cost way to curry favor with Trump.
On Thursday, per the AFP, Putin said the United States is making “quite vigorous and sincere efforts to halt hostilities, end the crisis, and reach agreements that serve the interests of all parties involved in this conflict.” He also dangled the possibility of “long-term conditions for peace … if we reach agreements on strategic offensive arms control.”
Max Seddon of The Financial Times observed that, in buttering up Trump, Putin was seemingly appealing to the president’s long-standing yearning for a Nobel Peace Prize. Last month, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said a Trump Nobel Prize is “well past time,” while citing misleading claims about the president’s foreign policy. On Thursday, the influential Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv reported that Trump recently called Norway’s finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, “out of the blue” to say “he wanted the Nobel Prize—and to discuss tariffs.”
Lately, several world leaders have played to Trump’s apparent hankering for a Nobel. Leaders of countries such as Pakistan, Israel, Guinea-Bissau, Gabon, Azerbaijan, Armenia have seemingly caught onto this easy route to the president’s heart.
At the Alaskan summit, Trump is hoping to set a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire in motion—though he’s managed expectations, saying, “I think it’ll be good, but it might be bad.” (The president’s promise to end the war on “day one” is now broken by nearly 7 months.)
While, as Seddon noted, Putin appears to be dangling a gold Nobel medal before the president, Trump reportedly may offer rare earth minerals in return.
The Telegraph reports that, among other economic incentives, the president is considering giving Russia access to mineral deposits in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, which houses a sizable portion of Europe’s lithium supply. He is also weighing giving Russia opportunities to exploit Alaska’s natural resources, namely in the oil- and gas-rich Bering Strait.
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