On August 15, a special lunch ceremony in honor of Vladimir Putin was planned to be held after the meeting between the presidents of Russia and the United States. This was reported by Zamin.uz.
This information became known after documents belonging to the U.S. State Department protocol service were found in a hotel in Anchorage. The documents obtained by NPR radio contained instructions for protocol service staff, their phone numbers, the arrangement of delegations, and rules for pronouncing Russian names.
For example, the name Putin was indicated to be pronounced as “POO-tihn,” Lavrov as “Laav-rof,” and Ushakov as “Oo-sha-kov.” The documents were found by an unknown client at the Captain Cook hotel in Anchorage and submitted to the NPR editorial office.
They were published at 9:00 local time, about two hours before the presidents' meeting. The documents show that preparations for the meeting were carried out hastily.
Initially, the meeting was planned in a “two-by-two” format, with Putin and his aide Yuri Ushakov representing Russia, and President Donald Trump and his representative Steve Whitkoff representing the U.S. Later, both sides changed to three participants each.
Sergey Lavrov joined from the Russian side, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined the U.S. delegation. According to the protocol, a lunch ceremony “in honor of His Excellency the President of the Russian Federation” was planned after the meeting.
Six people from each side were supposed to participate. The menu included green salad with vinaigrette, bread with rosemary and lemon butter, main dishes of pepper sauce or halibut fish fillet, and mashed potatoes as a side dish.
For dessert, crème brûlée with ice cream was offered. Also, Trump was planned to present Putin with a white-headed eagle statue as a symbol of the United States.
However, in the end, this lunch ceremony did not take place. This information sparked wide discussions in the West.
Some politicians and opposition figures criticized the symbolic “respect” shown by American soldiers laying out a carpet in front of the Russian president's plane. Critics argued that the U.S. president, accepted as the leader of the free world, receiving an autocrat accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court as an honored guest is a serious political symbol.
Moreover, the disclosure of the documents showed insufficient attention to information security in the Trump administration. According to NPR, in March of this year, a journalist was accidentally added to a chat where high-level U.S. officials were discussing military plans in Yemen.
In conclusion, this incident surrounding the negotiations in Anchorage is causing significant discussions not only politically but also symbolically and from the perspective of information security.
