A senior member of the state Duma, Russia’s parliament, said that any U.S. states that want to break away from the country and instead join the Russian Federation will be considered.
The comments come only a week after Russia declared that four regions of Ukraine had become Russian territory, following referendums that were widely criticized by Ukrainian and Western officials as being sham. These were Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. The votes supported the regions changing from Ukrainian to Russian territory.
State Duma deputy Alexander Tolmachev was responding to an online poll that showed that some Americans wanted their states to break free from the U.S. If Americans vote to secede some states from the country and express a desire to join Russia, Moscow will consider it, Tolmachev told Russian news site Podmoskovye Segodnya.
