A pro-Kremlin media channel taunted Donald Trump by posting an image of a “People’s Republic of Alaska” flag to its website. The US President is set to meet Vladimir Putin in Anchorage on Friday in an attempt to thrash out a ceasefire deal in Ukraine.
Alaska was formerly part of the Russian Empire but was sold for $7.2million USD – roughly $130 million in today’s money – in 1867. Russian nationalists have never accepted the sale, and have tried to rewrite the history books, claiming the C19th deal was only meant as “a lease for 100 years”. In an attempt to stir up nationalist sentiment, the Russian Telegram channel Tsargrad TV posted an image of what it called the independent “People’s Republic of Alaska”.
The flag bears the image of a double headed eagle set on a backdrop of a horizontal tricolour with three equal colours of white, blue and black.
It bears a striking resemblance to the current flag of Russia, differing only in its colours and central emblem that appears to show a panoramic view of Alaska.
The channel provocatively asked its followers: “How do you like the new flag of Alaska?” Followers quickly picked up the idea, debating which colours would best suit the fake flag.
Tsargrad TV is owned by Russian media mogul Konstantin Malofeev, who is often called the “Orthodox oligarch” due to his close connections to the Church hierarchy. The far-right nationalist is under Western sanctions for financing and promoting anti-Ukrainian movements in Ukraine since 2014.
Russian propagandists and politicians have regularly laid claim to Alaska, insisting it is Russian. In July 2022, Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said Moscow would lay claim to Alaska if Washington froze Russian assets on account of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
That same year, billboards started popping up across Russia declaring that “Alaska is ours!”
The Kremlin’s top TV propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov and Olga Skabeeva, have — along with their guests —r epeatedly claimed that Alaska is “theirs” (Russia’s).
Trump’s summit with Putin has sparked fears that the US President may be about to hand the state back to Russia among some of the state’s residents.
Ess Brown, an Anchorage local, told the German current affairs magazine Der Spiegel: “It’s given rise to a lot of conspiracy theories here, especially in connection with President Trump’s vague statements about the ‘land swap.’ The wildest of them is: We’re being handed over to Russia to end the war in Ukraine.”
