“Let America always remember: there is a part of its territory that is Russia — Alaska,” Vyacheslav Volodin, a Putin ally and speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, said on Wednesday, according to multiple media reports. “When they try to appropriate our assets abroad, they should know that we also have something to claim,” Volodin added in remarks reported by the Associated Press and Russian publication RBC News. According to RBC News, Volodin also referred to a suggestion by State Duma Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy that a referendum could be held in Alaska on the issue. The US purchased the territory of Alaska from the Russian government in 1867. At that time, the US signed a check for $7.2 million to pay for Alaska, along with a Treaty of Cession that confirmed the acquisition of the territory. Alaska now celebrates Alaska Day every year on October 18, marking the day the territory was transferred from Russia to the US. Alaska was admitted to the Union in 1959. In other aggressive comments on Wednesday, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, posted a long line on Telegram criticizing “any attempts to create courts or tribunals” to investigate Russia’s actions in Ukraine. “It won’t work with Russia, they know it well,” Medvedev wrote. “That’s why the rotten dogs of war bark in such a disgusting way.” Warning that it would be “absurd” to try to “punish a country with the largest nuclear potential”, Medvedev also criticized the US for trying to “spread chaos and destruction around the world for the sake of ‘true democracy’”. “The entire history of the U.S. since the subjugation of the indigenous Indian population represents a series of bloody wars,” Medvedev wrote, referring to other U.S. actions such as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II and the involvement them in the Vietnam War. “Was anyone held responsible for these crimes? What court condemned the sea of ​​blood spilled by the US there?” asked Medvedev. Medvedev’s comments were not the first time the Russians have threatened Ukraine’s allies with nuclear war. In May, a Russian propagandist warned that a nuclear attack could wipe out the UK and Ireland.