The Foreign Ministry considered extremist ideas about the return of Wrangel Island to the United States

The ideas of American experts about the need to return the Russian Wrangel Island in Chukotka to the United States are extremist, and the White House does not dispute the ownership of Wrangel Island, informed RIA Novosti Ambassador-at-Large of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Committee of Senior Officials of the Arctic Council Nikolai Korchunov.

Earlier, an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the author of which Thomas Dance stated that the United States should return Wrangel Island, since it belonged to the States about a hundred years ago: the Soviet government sent the Red October gunboat to the island in 1924, the expedition raised there the Soviet flag and took out the settlers.

“In the context of an unprecedented escalation of confrontation in Russian-American relations due to Washington, it is not surprising that various kinds of extremist initiatives have appeared. Attempts to present territorial claims to Russia, arbitrarily interpreting the facts and rewriting history, are obviously counterproductive and fraught with consequences, ”Korchunov said.

According to the diplomat, the proposals to “reveal the objective reality” are provocative and are made “for the purpose of their own PR or shocking”. US authorities are unlikely to “risk at any serious level of raising the territorial issue in relation to the Russian-American border,” and Russia’s response will be immediate, Korchunov said.

Wrangel Island, located in the Arctic Ocean between the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea, is named after the 19th-century Russian navigator and statesman Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel. The island is a state natural reserve, in 2004 it became the first Arctic object of the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage.