If President Trump is going to be talking land swaps with Vladimir Putin later this week, maybe he can get some American land back, too?

Friday’s talks in Alaska offer a historic and welcomed opportunity for rapprochement in our bilateral relations with Russia. We should try to get along with our neighbors, difficult though they may be. Trump is right to do so in attempting to broker peace in a war that should never have started.

However, the prospect of establishing neighborly relations again while negotiating over Ukrainian territory also raises long-frozen but now relevant issues between us in the very place where these leaders, and indeed our own two countries, meet — the Arctic. Acknowledging and working to resolve them will go a long way towards laying the groundwork for a better future between our nations.

Yesterday marked the 144th anniversary of the discovery and claiming of Wrangel Island by the US Coast Guard on August 12, 1881. Wrangel is a large island located in the Arctic Ocean about 270 nautical miles northeast of the coast of Alaska, about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. It was discovered that day by a landing party from the USRC Corwin, a patrol cutter of the Bering Sea Patrol — then the U.S. government authority in the young territory of Alaska.

The landing party, which included famed naturalist John Muir, hoisted the American flag and claimed the island in the name of the president of the United States. The island was........

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