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Russia Wants Alaska Back

Russia Wants Alaska Back

Last updated on: March 17, 2022 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Russia Wants Alaska Back 2022-03-16T20:14:57-04:00 Gene Veith

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Now Russia, trying to enforce its territorial claims on Ukraine with an invasion, is making other territorial claims. Including the American state of Alaska! Also a state park in California. Also the continent of Antarctica.

That’s the demand of at least one member of the Russian parliament, but it was aired on state TV, suggesting some level of official approval. Here is the exchange:

Duma member Oleg Matveychev, appeared on Russian state news on Sunday, stating a series of demands from both Washington and Kyiv “after Ukraine’s demilitarisation is completed”.

“We should be thinking about reparations from the damage that was caused by the sanctions and the war itself, because that too costs money and we should get it back,” Matveychev said on TV show Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov.

He added: “The return of all Russian properties, those of the Russian empire, the Soviet Union and current Russia, which has been seized in the United States, and so on.”

Solovyov asked if the lawmaker specifically meant Alaska and the former Russian settlement of Fort Ross, California.

“That was my next point. As well as the Antarctic,” Matveychev said. “We discovered it, so it belongs to us.”

Solovyov also appeared to endorse a nuclear strike on “those who took our money”.

He said: “I still think that those who took our money should be told, you have 24 hours to unfreeze our funds, or else we’ll send you what you know we’ve got.

“Your choice. Tactical or strategic, take a pick. You took our money, you’re the thieves, our talk is short with you: a bullet to the head,’ he said.

Russia sold Alaska to the US in 1867 for $7.2 million. Fort Ross was a Russian fort and small settlement built in 1813 in what is now Sonoma County, 93 miles north of San Francisco. The Russian-American company that operated the settlement sold it in 1841 to John Sutter, who would later spark the California Gold Rush, for $30,000. For Ross is now a California state park.

Earlier, Russian state TV also broadcast a former general explaining how Russia could take the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania–all members of NATO–as well as the Swedish island of Gothland. That broadcast was made at the end of last year, before the invasion–replayed recently by Ukraine to expose Russia’s wider intentions– but it indicates Russia’s ambitions to take back all that was formerly (in their minds) theirs.

Solovyov’s talk about getting Alaska and Fort Ross back is obviously bluster, a lashing out at America with ineffectual threats, an effort to save face in light of the debacle of the Ukraine invasion. But it demonstrates that the United States is not as far away from the war and its issues as we might assume.

Illustration: The Bering Strait [the 50 miles between Russia and Alaska], GretarssonBase map: © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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