Russian Politician Has Wild Suggestion for USA: GIVE BACK ALASKA
While the invasion of Ukraine by Russia is undeniably a very serious matter, there have been no shortage of frighteningly laughable moments as well, largely from within the harebrained insanity of the crumbling Russian government.
Vladimir Putin’s abject failures during this invasion are beginning to weigh on the minds of the Russian people. Perhaps their autocrat was all bark and no bite. Perhaps he isn’t the invincible tyrant they once believed him to be.
The fear of some sort of political revolt has been exacerbated by the massive economic sanctions imposed on Russia, that could soon see the citizenry upended.
All of this uncertainty has the Kremlin frantic, and frankly producing some absurd suggestions.
Oleg Matveychev, a member of the state Duma, outlined on Russian state television a set of demands for the U.S. and Ukraine after Kiv’s “demilitarization is completed,” the Express newspaper in the United Kingdom reported.
The demands include the return of Alaska, which the U.S. purchased from the Russian Empire in 1867 as part of the Alaska Purchase, and the former Russian settlement of Fort Ross, California, 90 miles north of San Francisco.
“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 during a Sunday interview.
Advertisement - story continues belowHe also called for 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.”
Afterward, he was asked if he meant Alaska and Fort Ross.
And he didn’t stop there.
“That was my next point. As well as the Antarctic,” he said. “We discovered it, so it belongs to us.”
Given just how feebly the Russian military has performed in Ukraine, the prevailing attitude toward any such threats from the Kremlin is bound to be “we’d like to see you try”.
