 Russia-U.S. war may start over Alaska. The U.S. State Department has dismissed reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin's revanchism may extend as far as Alaska after the Kremlin issued a new decree regarding historic Russian real estate holdings abroad according to Newsweek. I speak for all of us in the U.S. government to say that certainly he's not getting it back. State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said to laughter during a press briefing when asked about Moscow's purported claim on Alaska. Putin last week signed a new measure directing and funding the presidential administration and the foreign ministry in searching for real estate in the Russian Federation, the former Russian Empire, the former USSR, proper registration of rights and legal protection of this property. The scope and intention of the measure is not clear. Ultra-nationalist bloggers seized on the vaguely worded document to call for fresh Russian aggression against countries that now control once Russian land, among them the United States, NATO states in Eastern and Central Europe and several Central Asian nations. Pro-Ukrainian social media accounts, meanwhile, incorrectly claimed that Putin had used the decree to declare the 1967 Russian sale of Alaska to the U.S. as illegal or illegitimate.