Trump taunted by Putin's top diplomat seconds after Russians arrive in Alaska

Vladimir Putin's top diplomat appeared to be taunting President Donald Trump as the Russian arrived in Alaska for a high-stakes summit to discuss the war in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived Friday morning for the talks wearing a sweater emblazoned with the inscription “CCCP" — the Cyrillic abbreviation for USSR — in an apparent reference to Russian propagandists fantasizing about reclaiming Alaska during negotiations to end the war, reported The Daily Beast.

Alaska had been part of the Russian Empire before the United States purchased it in 1867 for $7.2 million under President Andrew Johnson. It attained statehood in 1959, but many Russians have been taught the myth that the land was stolen through treachery.

Pro-Kremlin broadcaster Olga Skabeyeva repeated the myth "Alaska is ours" during a July 2024 episode of the Russia-1 talk show "60 Minutes," six months after the U.S. State Department addressed a decree from Russia that some interpreted as a signal the state would be clawed back through negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

"I speak for all of us in the U.S. government to say that, certainly, he is not getting it back," said Vedant Patel, then principal deputy spokesperson for the State Department in January 2024.

Sergej Sumlenny, founder of the European Resilience Center, grew up near Moscow and said he was taught in school that the U.S. had "leased" Alaska for 100 years and later forged and broke that contract, which he said flowed from a Russian sense of victimhood.

"It's important to understand a lot of Russians grow up with the belief they have, for centuries, been betrayed and cheated by the treacherous West, and in this mythology, the Americans are the most greedy and unreliable people of all," Sumlenny said.

"The idea that Russia used to control many lands, and that the West has stolen these lands, fits very naturally into this narrative," he added. "I think among all the territories which Russians think they have a claim over — Finland, parts of Poland, East Germany, Central Asia, Ukraine — Alaska is second only to Crimea."