Free Republic

In May 1881 US explorers approached Jeannette Island, Wrangell Island and Henrietta Island in the Arctic Ocean and claimed them for the United States. But according to the Obama Department of State no claim exists today over these US islands. In fact the State Department is conspiring with Russian President Putin to give away Wrangell Island to Russians. Wrangell and its 200 mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) has billions of barrels of oil/gas reserves and hundreds of millions of pounds of fisheries. It also has a strategic military location for tracking Russian moves in Arctic. The Coast Guard is a...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is making an astonishing bid to grab a vast chunk of the Arctic - so he can tap its vast potential oil, gas and mineral wealth. His scientists claim an underwater ridge near the North Pole is really part of Russia's continental shelf. One newspaper printed a map of the "new addition", a triangle five times the size of Britain with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Muscle-flexing: Putin has his sights on Arctic oil and gas The dramatic move provoked an international outcry. The U.S. and Canada expressed shock and environment campaigners said it...

It may have been a joke, but some media organizations and politicians in Moscow appear to have taken half-seriously a satirical suggestion that the United States should sell Alaska back to Russia for $1 trillion. The tongue-in-cheek proposal published in a U.S. newspaper raised the vague notion still present here that Russia could one day retrieve the territory it sold to the U.S. The return of Alaska would be marked by a great national holiday, said Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an outspoken nationalist politician. Russia would then have a presence on three continents -- Europe, Asia and America -- noted Zhirinovsky, who...

This is from a direct-mail fundraising piece from "StateDepartmentWatch.org". They say that the current congress "will decide the fate of eight strategically and economically vital islands in Alaska...and the U.S. will get nothing in return." This is the first that I've heard this claim and I don't know if it's valid.

Also see: America Gives Russia a Fortune in Oil and Fish. WASHINGTON – The State Department continues to trifle with the truth about its infamous giveaway of American islands off mainland Alaskan near Siberia. The giveaway began in 1977, was secret until it was revealed in the mostly unread Federal Register in 1984, was sealed in an executive agreement approved as a treaty by the Senate in 1991, rejected by the Russian Duma in 1997, and now - ironically because of the reluctance of our former Cold War adversary - is thankfully unratified. The Russians want even more. Nonetheless, the...

A polar bear has killed the last villager on Russia's Vrangel island off the northern Chukotka peninsula, scientists at a local reserve said today. The reserve's workers attempted to save Vasilina Alpaun, who was attacked on her own doorstep, but were too late. The Ushakovskoye village had been abandoned since 1997, when its inhabitants were moved to the peninsula to make way for the bear reserve, but Alpaun, 25, returned to her old home shortly afterwards. Bears roam free on the island and are rarely aggressive, the reserve's director Leonid Bove said, adding that the woman most likely provoked the...

Quietly, State Dept. Turns Over American Islands to Russia, Others In recent years several U.S. islands have been ceded to Russia and other countries, without congressional approval or public debate. These islands, many uninhabited, are significant because they hold potential mineral, gas, oil and fishing rights – not to mention potential strategic military value. So where exactly are these disputed islands? The Arctic islands, which lie west of Alaska and north of Siberia, include the islands of Wrangell, Herald, Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta. The islands in the Bering Sea make up the westernmost point in Alaska’s Aleutian chain and include...