“Like any ghost, no one really knows what it is. But the Russians believe in it and think everyone else should believe in it too. Reality makes one thing clear: if the ‘spirit of Anchorage’ ever existed, it is certainly dead now,” Sybiha said.
He stressed that any peace plan developed without Ukraine is doomed to become nothing more than a ghost and fade away, adding that this is the lesson of Anchorage for Russia.
“It is time for Moscow to stop believing in ghosts and instead respond to Ukraine’s serious proposals to sit down at the negotiating table and end the war,” Ukraine’s foreign minister said.
Sybiha added that the longer Vladimir Putin refuses to accept the reality that he will never achieve his objectives on the battlefield, “the worse it will be for Russia.”
On June 24, Reuters drew attention to public statements by three senior Russian officials who, over the course of three days, accused the United States of violating alleged “agreements” reached in Alaska in August 2025.
The agency noted that after last year’s Alaska summit, Moscow repeatedly referred to the so-called “spirit of Anchorage,” a phrase used to describe the Kremlin’s claim that U.S. President Donald Trump had backed Russia’s key demand for Ukraine to relinquish the entire Donbas, including areas not occupied by Russian forces, in exchange for freezing the front line elsewhere.
The United States has never confirmed that any such agreement was reached, and no agreement was publicly announced following the summit.
On June 25, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “there was no agreement in Alaska.”
“There was a proposal in Alaska. But it was never an agreement,” Rubio said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded by criticizing Rubio’s remarks.