Hundreds of demonstrators lined Anchorage streets Wednesday with Ukrainian flags and signs reading “Putin won’t stop at Ukraine” as they protested Vladimir Putin’s arrival for Friday’s 11:00 a.m. summit with Donald Trump at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

Trump’s admission of needing “give and take” on boundaries between Russia and Ukraine has protesters worried he’ll legitimize Putin’s demands for complete control of four Ukrainian oblasts while keeping President Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of decisions about his own country’s future. Trump told Fox News Radio there’s a “25% chance” the Alaska talks could fail, as per BBC.

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“I don’t like it at all” – NAACP leader rejects Putin on US soil

Benny Kobert, who leads the Fairbanks NAACP chapter, didn’t mince words about Putin setting foot on US soil. “I don’t like it at all,” he told Euromaidan Press. “There was a reason why Putin was restricted from touching United States soil because of the crimes that he’s been committing all over the world and the genocide that he committed on his own people.”

Kobert worries about Trump’s track record of following through on his most controversial promises. “With all the misinformation, this is something that we really need to pay attention to because everything Trump is touting and wanting to do, he’s finding some way of doing it. And this is detrimental to our democracy.”

Russia wants everything, Ukraine gets nothing

Russia’s ceasefire conditions aren’t exactly subtle: complete control of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, full occupation of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, NATO membership ruled out for Ukraine, and limits on Ukraine’s armed forces. Ukraine rejects these terms as surrender.

Svetlana Pestronak brought both personal pain and professional insight to Wednesday’s protest. The longtime Alaskan researcher was born in Soviet Belarus, and her Ukrainian husband Igor hails from Odesa. She described standing “in solidarity with Ukraine” while honoring “the victims of mass rape, including child rape, the victims of torture and mutilation and murder.”

She criticized Alaska’s leadership for embracing what she called “a very misleading and dangerous message” about the summit’s supposed benefits, warning it plays into “long-standing Russian propaganda that we take Ukraine first, Alaska is next.”

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Putin came for the summit. Trump brought the white flag.

“Zelenskyy should be here” – fury over exclusion from own country’s fate

Carmen Brooks couldn’t hide her outrage that Zelenskyy wasn’t invited to Friday’s discussions about his country’s future. “Putin is a war criminal and he is being welcomed here to Alaska,” she told Euromaidan Press. “Not inviting Zelenskyy to a meeting that involves his country and major decisions doesn’t seem very right.”

What makes this worse? European leaders had to extract assurances from Trump in a separate call about five principles including keeping Ukraine “at the table” for follow-up talks and avoiding land swaps before a ceasefire.

When asked whether Putin should be arrested, Brooks replied simply: “Yes.”

“These parents deserve answers” – Trump’s war crimes data purge

Protester after protester brought up Trump’s elimination of the State Department unit tracking Ukraine’s kidnapped children. “Trump deleted the department that was tracking the missing children of Ukraine and I have a real big problem with that,” one protester said. “These parents deserve answers.”

The discontinued Yale University program had documented over 30,000 Ukrainian children abducted by Russian forces before Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cut its funding.

Environmental activist Cass said she came because: “I’m here protesting to show support for Ukraine and the war effort, but also to protest a war criminal being on US soil, specifically Alaska soil, and also protesting authoritarianism and fascism in general, which Putin and Trump both embody.”

From Cold War fortress to Putin’s welcome mat

Friday’s summit happens at the same military installation once used to counter Soviet expansion. Protesters see the irony: Putin’s presence validates exactly the imperial ambitions this base was built to deter.

Andrew Keller demanded that “Alaskans need to have input” in any resource negotiations rumored to be part of potential deals, “not Trump.” He called Putin’s presence “totally inappropriate” and argued that “you don’t invade the borders of a democratically elected free state.”

The protests come as Trump suggested he would know “in the first few minutes” whether Friday’s meeting was worth continuing, adding it would “end very quickly” otherwise.

Igor Pasternak, who left Odesa in 1999 and now calls Alaska home, told Euromaidan Press that seeing local support provided “a little bit healing” despite his pain over “not only what Russia does to Ukraine but also the reaction from some members of our government.”

Meanwhile, Russian propagandists are using the summit to revive territorial claims to Alaska itself, leveraging the summit’s symbolic venue choice to fuel imperial fantasies about reclaiming the territory Russia sold to the United States in 1867.