The authorities of the US city of Sitka are not considering giving the statue of the town's founder, Russian merchant Alexander Baranov, to any third parties, Alexander Radko, the deputy head of the Russian international cooperation agency, Rossotrudnichestvo, said in a letter to Russian lawmaker Mikhail Shchapov

Archbishop David Mahaffey of the Orthodox Church in America and the current bishop of Sitka city has expressed opposition to the planned removal of the statue of Alexander Baranov, who was the first Russian governor of Alaska and the founder of Sitka in the late 18th-early 19th century