A few days ago, I wondered where in Alaska Trump would allow Pitin t land. 2 days before meeying the USA finalized the actual location of the meeting: Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage.
The is quite last minute and shows they couldn.t secure/empty the whole town.
Photo: location of Elmemdorf air force station relative to Anchorage.
Back in Soviet era, it would have been unthinkable to allow a Russian plane to land at a US Air Force base. But the only way to protect Puni's plane from seizure if it were to land at commercial airport and would disrupt Anchorage Ted Stevens airport way too much.
From CNN:
American officials scrambling this weekend to identify and lock down a venue for Friday’s summit between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart quickly discovered a major snag: summertime is peak tourist season in Alaska, and options both available and equipped to host the two world leaders were severely limited.
<...> It’s unclear if those offers ever reached White House officials, who were calling sites in Juneau, the state capital, along with Anchorage and Fairbanks.
Organizers of the summit soon came to believe the only city in the massive state with viable options for the summit would be Anchorage. And only Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, on the northern edge of the city, would meet the security requirements for the historic meeting, though the White House had hoped to avoid the optics of hosting the Russian leader and his entourage on a US military installation.
Jean-Francois Mezei