A Russian lawmaker made an outlandish demand over the weekend that the United States return Alaska and a historic settlement in California, in addition to paying reparations to Russia over crippling American-led sanctions that have put Moscow’s economy in a tailspin.
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, 90miles north of San Francisco.
Meanwhile, in the latest escalation of tension between the White House and the Kremlin, Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced new sanctions on Tuesday against 11 Americans including President Joe Biden himself, Hunter Biden, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki. ‘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 Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov.
He continued, ‘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.’
