A senior Russian legislator has invited American states to secede and join the Russian Federation citing an online poll showing support amongst Americans for states to break away.
Alexander Tomalchev, a senior member of the Russian Duma (parliament) told Russian news site Podmoskovye Segodnya that any State of the United States state wishing to secede would be welcome to apply to join his nation, according to Newsweek.
He pointed out polls revealing a segment of Americans favoring secession from the United States, before asking for any such US state that wished to join Russia to hold elections on the issue.
“It is important that voting takes place not on social networks, but officially and legitimately, as in the Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Luhansk republics, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces,” Tolmachev said, referring to online polls.
Mr. Tomalchev supposedly added that Moscow would consider any US state intending to join the Russian Federation should any such election be held. Tomalchev added that the United States is beginning “to decay”.
He also opined that the European Union, another ally of Ukraine, is “bursting at its seams.”
Both the United States and also European Union, along with NATO members such as Canada and the UK, have offered billions in military aid to Ukraine in addition to military hardware while simultaneously imposing harsh financial and political sanctions upon Moscow.
Russia’s claims over the occupied Eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia have been near universally condemned by the international community and called shambolic by those outside the nation, including of in the US.
“The United States, I want to be very clear about this, will never, never, never recognize Russia’s claims on Ukraine sovereign territory,” US President Joe Biden said following this month’s staged elections in the four regions, while announcing new sanctions.
While it was uncertain which particular internet poll Mr. Tomalchev had actually described, members of the New Hampshire legislature voted to stay within the US earlier this year, with more than 300 legislators turning down the concept of leaving the union, as ABC News reported at the time. Only 13 legislators voted in favor the proposal.
The question of secession has also been raised in Texas as recently as 2021.
The comments by Mr. Tomalchev follow those of another Russian legislator, Duma member Oleg Matveychev who said Moscow “should be thinking about reparations” from the USA in the form of Alaska.
The “Greater Russia” radical hawks in Putin’s orbit also want Russia to annex or conquer ALASKA, which Russia sold to America in 1867.
Read that again. Then pass it on.
— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) September 30, 2022
Alaska is the closest US state to Russia, with just 55 miles separating the two at the closest point between the mainlands. The islands of Little Diomede and Big Diomede in the Bering strait owned by the U.S. and Russia respectively are only separated by a mere 2.4 miles of water that freezes over for part of the year. Yes, according to The Associated Press, sometimes you can WALK from America to Russia.
The Russian Empire colonized Alaska in the 19th century under Czar Alexander II then known as Russkaya Amerika before selling the territory to the US in 1867 for $7.2 million (about $144 million in 2022 dollars.) However, it was added to the United States as a territory through the Alaska Purchase in 1867 and eventually gained statehood on January 3, 1959, as the 49th state.
According to NBC News, only about 5,200 people, altogether less than 1 percent of Alaska’s overall population claimed Russian as their primary heritage, from 2000 census figures. Russian is even taught in some schools.
The most enduring signs of Russian heritage in the state are a village of 350 or so “Old Believers” of the Russian Orthodox Church in Nikolaevsk, Alaska who fled from Russia in the last century, and some 20,000 adherents of the contemporary Russian Orthodox Church who are mostly Inuit natives.
Two other towns in Alaska, Fox River, and Aleneva also boast majority ethnic Russian populations, though both are very small, numbering less than 1,000 people between them.