WI: Yeltsin grants the US a base?

Maybe an Antarctic base, with the wording of the lease being used to claim the U.S. has recognized Russian sovereignty over the area.
 
How about leasing Kalininrad? Formerly a portion of East Prussia now occupied by Russians

Least probable of all - Kaliningrad has no land connection with Mother Russia, allowing foreign troops there would be functionally begging to have the enclave de facto split off through occupation at the first sign of trouble.
Anywhere else and you can have Guards Army base or two within tank fuel tank ;) distance, here you'd have an enclave you'd need to sail / cross foreign territory to reach.
 

Ak-84

Banned
Its not all that unlikely that the US might have attempted to try and get the Russian the Far East to secede and then find reasons to annex it themselves. At least compared to the Russians granting the US a base.
 
There's some major oil spill by an American tanker near Kamchatka, and the Russians allow US Navy ships to dock in Petropavlovsk for the duration of the clean-up ?
 
There's some major oil spill by an American tanker near Kamchatka, and the Russians allow US Navy ships to dock in Petropavlovsk for the duration of the clean-up ?
I imagine there would be questions asked about why the tanker was heading west or south away from Alaska, though.
 

RousseauX

Donor
I can see it if it's like a far east Siberian base and in exchange the Russians get a base in Alaska or something as kind of a "we are all cooperating now" symbolic move
 
I can see it if it's like a far east Siberian base and in exchange the Russians get a base in Alaska or something as kind of a "we are all cooperating now" symbolic move

Thats what I've been thinking. Some derelict soviet base in Primorsky in-exchange for a collection of goods from the US (maybe even an alaskan base)
 
Why would the USA need a base in Russia? To do what? Who will they attack/defend from there? What would US get with base in Russian Far East- that they cannot do from their bases in Japan and Korea? Provoke Russian nationalists and communists? Jeopardise allready fragile position of Russian reformers ( Yeltsin and his crew )?
 
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