larry johnson speaks about alaska later today;

I don’t know what the outcome of Friday’s summit between Russia and the US will be, but I do know that Russia is putting on a full-court press to show the rest of the world that it is serious about negotiating with the US, and is backing its words by the stature of the delegation it is sending. Based on Yuri Ushakov’s description of the schedule and the composition of the Russian delegation, the topic of how to end the war in Ukraine is not Russia’s only priority. I say this because the only Russian military rep who will attend the summit is the Defense Minister, Andrey Belousov. If the two sides were going to get into the nitty gritty of the war, I believe that General Gerasimov would have been included in the delegation.

Given the scant comments from the Trump administration about the schedule and the topics for discussion, it appears that Trump is deliberately obscuring the intent of the conference from Washington’s neocons and Ukraine’s ardent supporters. We have heard nothing about US preparations, but Vladimir Putin made sure that the world was informed today in detail about what Russia is doing to prepare for the meeting.

President Putin convened a meeting of his national security, foreign policy and economic advisors at the Kremlin on Thursday, and opened the session with the following statement:..........more.......