Vladimir Putin’s ally has declared Ukraine is “definitely Russia” – and presented a map just how much of the country Moscow thinks it should control.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and former Russian president, also ruled out any peace talks with Kyiv during a speech on Monday.
Speaking from southern Russia, he said: “One of Ukraine’s former leaders said at some point that Ukraine is not Russia.
“That concept needs to disappear forever. Ukraine is definitely Russia.”
At the moment, Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian land.
Medvedev also claimed Russian public opinion must not be ignored, adding: “It rightfully regards Ukraine and its population as part of our all-Russian civilisation.
“Had Ukraine escaped the stupidest trap set by the United States and its allies in order to counter our country with Ukraine’s assistance and use this very ‘anti-Russia entity,’ things might have been different.”
Moscow has long blamed the West for the Ukraine war, repeatedly claiming Russia’s brutality in Ukraine is just defensive action against the West’s expansion – even though Putin is the one who actually invaded Ukraine two years ago.
“Our actions are a forced but quite an effective response to the Russophobic policy,” he said, according to a translation shared by Russian state news agency TASS.
The politician also blamed “the collective West and its desire to destroy our statehood, undermine independence and sovereignty” for the Ukraine war.
During his speech, Medvedev was standing in front of a map of Ukraine where the beleaguered country’s borders had been redrawn.
Instead of the substantial landmass it has been internationally recognised as since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the map suggested it was a small landlocked area next to Poland.
Ukraine’s borders to the east and the south, along with its Black Sea coastline, seem to be under Russia’s control in the map.
Medvedev also claimed: “Russia, like any great power, has strategic borders, of course, lying far beyond the geographical ones.
“They rest upon not on military force or financial injections, but on a much more solid, practically immutable basis.”
He added that Moscow would not negotiate with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy – and he would only speak to a government which recognises Russia’s idea of what should happen.
He also said the US-Russia relations were worse now than during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.