The Kremlin is using the upcoming Alaska summit to position Russia as a global power equal to the US, and Russian President Vladimir Putin as an equal to US President Donald Trump, according to a report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), writes RBC-Ukraine.

It is reported that Wednesday, Russia’s lead negotiator and CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Kirill Dmitriev, hinted at the 1945 Yalta Conference between the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union. He claimed that the Yalta Conference won World War II and suggested that Putin and Trump are similarly preventing World War III.

Deputy Chair of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs Alexei Chepa reinforced the comparison between the upcoming Alaska summit and Yalta, stating that the US and Russia should talk to each other as friends.

The head of the Russian administration in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, declared that Trump should visit Crimea to negotiate a new Yalta peace.

Several Russian media outlets also likened the Alaska summit to Yalta, claiming that people with real influence over global processes will be at the negotiation table in Alaska.

According to ISW experts, Russia’s comparisons of the Alaska summit on August 15 to the 1945 Yalta Conference are an attempt to conceal the power imbalance between the US and Russia and to portray Russia as having far stronger diplomatic, military, and economic positions than it actually does.

Analysts believe Russia is already trying to frame the mere fact of a Trump–Putin meeting as a victory and to create the perception that Russia is an equal partner to the US.

The Institute considers the comparisons between the two meetings inaccurate.

“Comparisons between the two meetings are also inaccurate because the 1945 Yalta Conference resulted in an agreement about post-war Europe, while Trump and other US officials have reiterated that the August 15 summit will not result in any US-Russia agreements about the end of the war in Ukraine,” ISW noted.