U.S. Senate Candidates Want to Protect Arctic Alaska From Russia

With Russian President Vladimir Putin at war with the West in Ukraine, the need to protect Arctic Alaska from foreign aggression was an area of agreement on Saturday among Alaska’s U.S. Senate candidates. This is reported by Alaska Public Media.

Putin has “one hand on Ukraine, and he has got the other on the Arctic,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said at the Alaska Federation of Native candidate forum in Anchorage.

Murkowski said she had spoken to the two asylum seekers - who are Indigenous Siberians - who fled eastern Russia by boat and landed on Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island early this month.

“They feared for their lives because Russia, Putin, is targeting minority populations for conscription into service in Ukraine,” she said.

As for what the federal government is doing to counter the threat, Murkowski recited a long list of items. Among them three icebreakers that are on their way, cutter and aviation deployments throughout the Bering Sea,  the Northwest Arctic and the 11th Airborne at JBER, the Ted Stevens Arctic Security Study Center, the port of Nome and a new federal leadership in Arctic engagement.