Papers allegedly left behind after the highly scrutinized meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, are now at the center of controversy after reportedly revealing sensitive details about the summit.
The two leaders met on August 15 for several hours to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine and the possibility of negotiating a peace framework.
The high-profile encounter began with both leaders arriving in Alaska to great media attention. Cameras captured their handshake on the red carpet, with netizens noting Trump appeared to pull Putin closer in a characteristically firm gesture as an assertion of "dominance".
Their private discussions reportedly lasted around three hours, after which they delivered a joint press conference.
While the two men admitted they had not reached a definitive resolution, they insisted “progress” had been made. The limited nature of the statement left many speculating about what had truly been discussed.
That speculation grew louder after NPR reported that eight documents marked with U.S. State Department insignia had been discovered in the business center of an Anchorage hotel the morning after the summit.
According to reports, the papers were apparently left behind in the public printer by government staff. Three guests at Hotel Captain Cook discovered them, photographed the pages, and shared them with NPR while requesting anonymity.
The documents (which have now appeared on X) allegedly contained a surprising amount of detail. One page reportedly outlined specific meeting rooms inside the Anchorage facility and even noted Trump’s plan to present Putin with an “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue” as a symbolic gift.
Other pages reportedly listed the names and phone numbers of several U.S. staffers, alongside the names of 13 state leaders from both the American and Russian delegations. A list of Russian officials expected to attend was also included, complete with phonetic pronunciation guides.
Further documents, according to NPR, appeared to describe how a formal luncheon “in honor of His Excellency Vladimir Putin” was to be arranged.
The seating chart placed Trump alongside key members of his administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff.
Putin, in turn, was reportedly scheduled to sit near his longtime foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and senior adviser Yuri Ushakov. The meal itself was to include salad, filet mignon, halibut Olympia, and crème brûlée.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly sought to downplay the reports, dismissing the leaked materials as nothing more than a “multi-page lunch menu” and denying that their discovery represented any form of security breach.
Still, the level of detail described in the alleged documents (particularly staff names and contact information) has fueled concern over carelessness within the summit’s organizational team.
While the luncheon was ultimately canceled, the incident has raised new questions about how securely sensitive diplomatic information is being handled.