WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th August, 2020) Authorities of the US city of Sitka in Alaska created a task force in order to relocate the statue of city founder Alexander Baranov, Municipal Administrator John Leach told Sputnik.
"A Task Force has been created to develop a plan to move the statue into the museum inside the building that the statue is currently located in the front of," Leach said.
The team members did not meet yet, but they will be developing a plan soon, he added.
In late June, a group of activists urged the Sitka authorities to remove the Baranov statue, citing the mistreatment of indigenous people. On July 14, the Sitka city assembly adopted a resolution to relocate the Baranov statue from downtown to the Sitka Historical Society Museum.
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said that requests to buy the statue had come from the administrations of the Russian cities of Arkhangelsk, Irkutsk and Magadan.
Baranov was the first Russian governor of Alaska and the founder of Sitka (then Novo-Arkhangelsk), the capital of the Russian colonies in North America, in the late 18th-early 19th century. His statue became an issue of controversy among Sitka activists during a larger campaign in the US against monuments of Confederate generals, slave-owners and explorers.
