This territory, sold to the United States in the mid-19th century, is just a few kilometers from Russia.
After Donbass, Alaska? As the Russian army continues to advance into eastern Ukrainian territory 19 weeks after beginning its invasion on February 24, Moscow remains at the center of all international sanctions that are putting the country’s economy in a difficult position. Western sanctions greatly displease local elected officials who are trying to respond by any means necessary.
This Wednesday, it was Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the Duma, the lower house of Russia’s Federal Assembly, who delivered a pointless but fairly blunt warning at a meeting with local officials, Newsweek reports.
“If they try to take our assets abroad, they have to realize that we also have a claim,” this close friend of Vladimir Putin put it, referring directly to Alaska, a US State previously owned by Russia before being sold to Washington in March 1867 for a price of $7.2 million.
Antarctica and California?
This new departure underscores the glaring tensions but also the growing rift between Russia and the United States, while the head of Russian diplomacy himself, Sergei Lavrov, believed an “iron curtain” was falling between his country and the West. A vocabulary borrowed voluntarily from the Cold War, which, in connection with several threats to use nuclear weapons in recent weeks, gives rise to fears of Moscow’s desire for confrontation.
Especially since Alaska isn’t the center of everyone’s eyes for the first time. At the level of the Bering Strait, this area is located less than five kilometers from Russia, at the level of the islands of Big and Little Diomede. The mainland part of the state is almost 90 kilometers from its neighbor.
Earlier this year, it was Oleg Matveychev, a member of the Duma, who on Russian television demanded that the United States “return all Russian property, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and present-day Russia.” In addition to Alaska, it also referred to a part of California that was itself briefly Russian in the 18th century, but also to Antarctica. “We discovered it, so it’s ours,” he said.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy responded scathingly on Twitter. “Good luck with it! Not if we have anything to say about it. We have hundreds of thousands of armed and military Alaskans who will see things differently,” he wrote.