What does Putin want?

Don Trump chose the wrong spot to host Vladimir Putin—Alaska, a gold- and oil-rich land Russia had lost to the US 158 years ago. The sight of several Russian Orthodox churches—80 including a 230-year-old cathedral in Kodiak—if Putin saw them from the air, would only have steeled his resolve not to concede any more land to the west.

- By R. PRASANNAN

Alaska was once Russia's. After his defeat at the hands of the British in the 1854-56 Crimean War, Tsar Alexander II worried that Britain would next invade Alaska from Canada. Instead of losing it in war to an enemy, he thought it prudent to sell Alaska to the neutral US for $7 million. Russian nationalists are yet to forgive the tsar for the folly.

How the atlas misleads us! It shows Russia and America hemispheres apart. We think they are poles apart, too. Quite contrary! They are hemispheres apart politically, but poles together geographically. In winter, when the Bering Strait freezes, you can walk from Russia's Big Diomede isle to the US's Little Diomede, only three miles away.

It could take you a day—the international dateline passes through the strait.