• North America
• John Haltiwanger

August 15, 2025, 3:18 PM View Comments ()

The Russian government is many things, but subtle is not one of them. Ahead of a highly anticipated summit on the Russia-Ukraine war in Alaska on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov engaged in some blatant trolling.

Lavrov arrived in Alaska wearing a CCCP sweatshirt. Those are the Russian initials for “USSR,” which stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (aka the Soviet Union). Experts say that Lavrov, who has been Russia’s top diplomat for roughly two decades, knew exactly what he was doing by wearing that sweatshirt. “He wouldn’t do this just by chance,” former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt said of Lavrov’s sweatshirt via X.

The war in Ukraine—a former Soviet republic—is widely viewed as a product of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet Union and imperialistic ambitions.

Putin once referred to the collapse of the USSR as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” And, after ordering the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he compared himself to Peter the Great—effectively portraying himself as a righteous conqueror who’s fighting to restore control over what he views as Russian lands (much of Ukraine was also previously part of the Russian Empire).

The Russian president, a former KGB officer, has also repeatedly suggested that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people” and said in June that “the whole of Ukraine is ours.” Putin has falsely claimed that Ukraine, which gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, isn’t a real country and was created by Russia.

Along these lines, Lavrov’s choice of attire garnered a fair amount of attention in terms of the message it appeared to send about Russia’s mentality heading into the Alaska summit between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, told Foreign Policy that Lavrov’s CCCP sweatshirt suggests that Moscow is taking the meeting “seriously” but “not in terms of achieving a peaceful settlement.”

Russia views the summit as “another opportunity to flaunt that they have no respect for this U.S. administration,” Hodges added.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, posted on X that Lavrov was “trolling Trump” with his sweatshirt. Meanwhile, former Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis posted, “‘Just give us half of Ukraine and we promise we will stop’ says negotiator wearing USSR sweatshirt.”

In another move that could be seen as an effort to troll Ukraine and the West, the Russian journalists’ in-flight meal en route to Alaska was apparently chicken Kiev—a dish bearing the name of the Ukrainian capital (albeit with its Russian spelling).

Ukraine and its supporters have been nervous in the lead-up to the meeting, worrying that Putin doesn’t genuinely desire peace and that he’ll attempt to manipulate Trump into embracing a framework for a peace agreement that’s bad for Ukraine. Trump has also downplayed expectations for the summit, but as he traveled to Alaska on Friday, he told reporters aboard Air Force One that he wants to see a cease-fire “today.”

Hodges said he has “very low expectations for this so-called summit,” adding that Trump’s threats of “severe consequences” for Russia if there’s no cease-fire agreement “ring hollow, since the president has done this already five or six times, without any actual consequences for Russia, and Putin knows this.”

“Trump’s approach is of a businessman from the late 1990s working a real estate deal in Manhattan,” Hodges said.

Trump is set to meet with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, around 11:30 am local time (3:30 pm ET). If the meeting is constructive, the pair are expected to hold a joint press conference at the end of the summit. The meeting was previously billed as a one-one-one between Trump and Putin but will now reportedly be three-on-three. Trump will be joined by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Putin will reportedly be joined by his aide Yuri Ushakov and Lavrov.