If at first you don’t succeed, try, try invading another country. That seems to be the strategy that Vyacheslav Volodin, Russia’s lower house speaker and a top goon of Vladimir Putin, would like to employ as the country struggles in the war it started with Ukraine.
As The Daily Beast reports, Volodin—tired of seeing America interfere and help Ukraine by seizing Russian assets—threatened that if our country keeps it up, Russian soldiers might just want to come and try to take back the state of Alaska, which the U.S. purchased from Russia in 1867. (Quick—someone alert Sarah Palin!)
“Let America always remember, there is a part of [Russian] territory: Alaska,” Volodin said, according to Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske. “So when they start trying to dispose of our resources abroad, before they do it, let them think: we also have something to return.”
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, even seemed to imply that a nuclear attack could be on the table if America isn’t careful. “The entire U.S. history since the times of subjugation of the native Indian population represents a series of bloody wars,” Medvedev said. “The U.S. and its useless stooges should remember the words of the Bible: Do not judge and you will not be judged… so that the great day of His wrath doesn’t come to their home one day.”
But according to Steven Pifer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, there’s no reason for Americans to panic. “This is not a serious person,” Pifer said of Volodin.
While Russia did just managed to seize Luhansk, a city in eastern Ukraine, Russian forces are falling apart in many other places. As Shannon Vavra wrote for The Daily Beast:
In recent hours, Russian forces haven’t been up to the task of fighting war in Ukraine, necessarily. Some Russian troops are so drunk in regions of Zaporizhzhia—and causing car accidents and arms violations—that they are banned from buying alcohol. Some Russians are worried their commanders have been selling out their locations to make a buck or two.
(Via The Daily Beast)