The words that the former head of the US foreign policy department allegedly said about Russia are often used in political disputes. We checked to see if Albright actually said something like that.

The last surge in popularity of the phrase occurred in the summer of 2015, when Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev interview Kommersant newspaper stated:

“They would really like for Russia not to exist at all. Like countries. Because we have enormous wealth. And the Americans believe that we own them illegally and undeservedly, because, in their opinion, we do not use them the way we should use them. You probably remember the statement of former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that neither the Far East nor Siberia belongs to Russia.”

After the official’s statement caused a stir, journalists rushed to look for the English-language original and... did not find anything similar in Albright’s speeches. Yulia Latynina discovered what she believes is the first Russian-language mention of a phrase similar to this one. In June 2005, a certain Nataly1001 left on the forum of the website Germany.ru message: “Quite often, the Russian media began to exaggerate the topic of national security... The statement of the former US Secretary of State Mr. Albright was voiced: “There can be no talk of any world justice while such a territory as Siberia is owned by one country. Now, if it were another country, then it would be a different matter!”

However, Nataly1001 is definitely not the author of this phrase. Back in February of the same 2005, director Nikita Mikhalkov said in interview "Arguments and facts":

“How can we explain the fact that we are not invited to the meeting of the allies celebrating the 55th anniversary of the victory over Germany? Or the phrase of Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State: “Where is justice here if only one country owns a land like Siberia?” If only she had tried to say this 20 years ago!”

It does not appear that Mikhalkov himself invented this statement, however, as far as we know, this is the earliest mention of it on the Internet. As you can see, there was no option about the “Far East and Siberia” in those years.

The next distributor of Mikhalkov’s version of the phrase was the host of the “Postscriptum” program on the TVC channel, Alexei Pushkov, who in July 2005 noted: “As Madeleine Albright is credited with saying that “Siberia is too large a territory to belong to one state.” Even if she didn’t say exactly that, she probably thought it, or one of the smart people in America thought it.”

Political scientist and candidate of historical sciences Pushkov expressed himself relatively carefully, but this did not prevent the phrase from being widely disseminated as Albright’s original quote. It got to the point that in 2007 she was quoted during a “Direct Line” with Vladimir Putin and asked to comment. The Russian president then said that he was not familiar with Albright’s statement, but “he knows that such ideas are floating around in the minds of some politicians.” However, seven years will pass, and during the next live broadcast Putin will say:

“After all, we have heard many times from officials that it is unfair that all of Siberia belongs to Russia with its immeasurable riches. It's somehow unfair. As for taking Texas away from Mexico, that’s fair, but the fact that we are farming on our own land is unfair.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjYclBiuWiY&t=2m45s

As we can see, a statement that came out of nowhere managed to reach the highest echelons of power. However, the first place in the hit parade should still be given to FSO General Boris Ratnikov, who interview 2006, revealed to Rossiyskaya Gazeta journalists the secrets of the latest military-technical methods of penetrating the enemy’s subconscious:

“A couple of weeks before the start of the bombing of Yugoslavia by US aircraft, we conducted a session of connecting to the subconscious of Secretary of State Albright. I won’t retell her thoughts in detail. I will note only the most characteristic points that were confirmed after the start of NATO aggression in Serbia. <...> ...in the thoughts of Madame Albright we discovered a pathological hatred of the Slavs. She was also outraged by the fact that Russia has the largest mineral reserves in the world.”

Thus, the phrase attributed to Madeleine Albright, in any of its variants, turned out to be the fantasy of some Russian-speaking person.