Vladimir Putin allies are threatening to grab back Alaska from the US for Russia if the West moves on its assets.
Leaders around the world have been calling for seizing more than $300billion (£250billion) of Russian central bank assets and handing the funds to Ukraine to help rebuild the country.
While the movement has gained momentum in parts of Europe including the UK, it has faced resistance in the United States with Biden officials warning that diverting those funds could be illegal.
Now Russia's most senior parliamentarian Vyacheslav Volodin has warned that Russia could claim back Alaska if the West appropriates its assets as punishment for the war.
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The US purchased the territory from Tsar Alexander II in 1867 for $7.2 million (£6million), and it became a state in 1959.
“Decency is not weakness,” said the speaker of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.
“We always have something to answer with. Let America always remember, there is part of its territory... Alaska.”
He warned: “When they start trying to dispose of our resources abroad, let them think before they do so that we also have something to get back.”
He ordered other MPs to “keep an eye on Alaska”.
Kyiv president Volodymyr Zelensky has urged the West to sell Russian assets to pay for the recovery of Ukraine’s war-ravaged economy.
Volodin said: "We are not interfering in their internal affairs.
"But they have been saying for decades that everything that is happening with them, the elections of all presidents, all that is because Russia is interfering."
Another MP Pyotr Tolstoy - great great grandson of writer Leo Tolstoy and deputy speaker of the Kremlin-obedient parliament - proposed holding a referendum in Alaska.
Such a tactic was carried out in Crimea under the purview of the Russian military, resulting in a majority for joining Russia.
Last week, British foreign secretary Liz Truss said last week that the government wants to follow the example of Canada in seizing Russian assets in the UK to give them to Ukraine.
More than 120,000 homes in Ukraine have been destroyed during the Russian invasion leading to the need for billions in income to rebuild the country economically, according to estimates.
