TEMPO.CO, Moscow - A petition calling for Alaska to secede from the United States and "return" to Russia has received just over 40,000 signatures on the White House website.
The petition, posted by an 'S.V.' from Anchorage, needs 100,000 signatures in total by April 20 for a response from the White House.
Alaska was a Russian colony until 1867, when it was sold to the US for the equivalent of US$121 million because the territory had been overhunted and was too hard to administer from the Russian capital St. Petersburg.
The petition also references the population of Alaska by Siberians "16 to 10 thousand years ago" and then its mapping by Mikhail Gvozdez in 1732 which marked the beginning of the colony.
The petition is written in poor and sometimes confused English, leading observers to speculate a Russian wrote it.
WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV | MARIA RITA HASUGIAN
