asylum
Alaska: Russians flee by boat to US island
The flags of Russia and the USA. photo
© epa Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA/dpa
People are also fleeing the country in the extreme east of Russia. Two men arrived in the United States by boat on an island in the Bering Sea that belongs to Alaska.
Two Russians arrived by boat on an Alaskan island and applied for asylum in the United States. This was announced by Alaska Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan on Thursday (local time). According to the newspaper “Anchorage Daily News”, the two Russian citizens have already been flown out of St. Lawrence Island in the Arctic Bering Sea and, according to Governor Mike Dunleavy, taken to Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage.
The incident illustrates two things, Senator Sullivan said in the statement: “First, the Russian people do not want to fight Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Second, given Alaska’s proximity to Russia, our state has a vital role in America’s national security to guarantee.”
The two Republicans criticized the lack of presence of federal forces such as the Coast Guard in their state and called for more support from the US government in securing the state border. Washington must urgently prioritize capacities in the Arctic, such as infrastructure and defense forces. Border Patrol and the Coast Guard must have a ready plan in place in case “more Russians flee to the Bering Strait communities in Alaska,” Sullivan said.
Alaska, as the northernmost US state, only has a land border with Canada, but with its many islands it borders on Russian sea territory. St. Lawrence Island is even closer to the coast of eastern Russia’s Chukotka region than it is to mainland Alaska. The two men told island residents that they had left the eastern Russian city of Egvekinot, the news portal Alaska’s News Source reported. They would have covered more than 250 nautical miles in the Bering Sea.