Of course, the threat made the world’s leading power smile. The Governor of Alaska, Mike Dunleavy, has even been there sarcastic little phrase on Twitter, wishing “good luck” to Russian politicians. On July 7, the president of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, threatened the United States to take back Alaska. “Before trying to control our resources abroad, the United States should always remember that there is a part of its territory, Alaska, that we can claim”, declared in front of the deputies this close adviser of Vladimir Putin. So, should we be worried? And why is Russia eyeing this territory? We take stock in this video decryption.
A former Russian colony
Colonized by the Russian Empire in the mid-18th century, Alaska was a land of the fur trade, before the finances of the Russian Company of America began to decline in the mid-19th century.
The sequel after the ad
When the Crimean War broke out in 1853, the priorities of the Russian Empire shifted west, and Tsar Alexander II eventually sold Alaska to the United States for a whopping $7 million in 1867.
The instrumentalization of the past
But, under the Soviet era, the idea persisted in the Russian media that the agreement concluded with the United States was not a sale, but a fixed-term lease. An argument taken up fairly regularly by nationalist Russian politicians on state television, echoing the Kremlin’s rhetoric on “Greater Russia” (“Novarossia”) which aims to legitimize expansionism by recalling past borders – when well even the Russian population of Alaska never exceeded 2,500 people. “We had seen the same kind of discourse on the Russian past of Crimea just before the invasion of the peninsula in 2014”, recalls Carole Grimaud Potter, specialist in Russian geopolitics.
Françoise Thom: “Even today, the Russians only think of themselves as an empire”
More than a threat that should worry, this reminder of Alaska’s past belonging to Russia would be a way to stimulate patriotism in order to ensure public support for the war in Ukraine, believes Carole Grimaud Potter . “This is an existential issue for the Kremlin,” she underlines. And to continue:
“The message is also intended for Westerners. It is a way of telling them that as long as they help Ukraine, they will be under threat of attack. »
Alaska, a land of the future
Still, Vyacheslav Volodin probably did not threaten Alaska by chance. First, because it is a strategic area for Russian security. In the Bering Strait, which separates Asia from America, barely a few kilometers separate the last Russian island from the first American island.
The sequel after the ad
From the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea, the new European “Iron Curtain”
But above all, Alaska is set to take on an unprecedented strategic scope in the coming years, because of the possibilities opened up by the melting of the polar ice. In addition to access to new fish and hydrocarbon resources, melting ice is opening the way to shorter sea routes for global transportation.
The financial stakes for the control of the zone are therefore colossal… Which did not escape the Americans either. Behind their somewhat mocking reaction, the United States is investing massively to modernize their equipment in Alaska, the most militarized region of the country. Exercises are regularly organized. The last, in March, brought together more than 8,000 soldiers.
