Russian President
Vladimir Putin
justified his country's military attack on
Ukraine
two years ago by saying that its neighbors were preparing armed aggression against Russia and
denied at the beginning of the war that Moscow had any expansionist temptations
.
He limited himself to saying, at the beginning of the attack, that his country demanded things like a supposed "denazification" of Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president and grandson of Jews who fought against the Nazis in World War II and in which the presence far-right parliamentarian is one of
the smallest in Europe.
Western diplomacy and especially the governments of Eastern Europe have always corrected Putin to say that what the Kremlin autocrat seeks is
to expand Russia to occupy the parts of Eastern Europe
that were once occupied by Tsarist Russia or the Soviet Union.
They thus accuse Moscow of
seeking the disappearance of Ukraine
and further changes to the borders, which would lead to
years of instability and wars
, including
a conflict with NATO.
The most concrete plans now presented by the Russian Government
draw a map of Europe without Ukraine, reduced to a city-state
with limited powers.
That would be the Ukraine that would remain independent when Moscow managed to win the war, as
explained on television by Dimitri Medvedev,
the former president and close ally of Putin who now serves as his man in the national Security Council.
On the map of the Russian president
, his country eats up the east and center of Ukraine,
grants Poland a large part of the west, Transnitria (an area of Moldova controlled by Russia) would join Russia and regions of Hungary and Romania would be handed over to Ukraine such as Transcarpathia, where there are Hungarian and Romanian-speaking minorities, the remains of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and the population movements that caused the world wars of the first half of the 20th century.
The map of controversy.
Photo: X
Medvedev's map speech,
shown on television on Monday
and proclaimed before a group of young students in the city of Sochi,
was bellicose
and suggested that the objectives of Russia and Ukraine go much further than those announced so far.
"Ukraine is definitely Russia"
The former president said that
his country will not stop the war
until Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky capitulates.
Russia does not accept, if Medvedev is to be believed, any negotiation other than what is done after an unconditional capitulation of Ukraine.
President Putin's faithful ally said that
the concept that “Ukraine is not Russia must disappear forever
.”
Ukraine is definitely Russia.
The historic parts of the country have to come home.”
Medvedev was seen during his years of government (2008-2012, when he held the presidency because Putin, with the constitution in force at that time, could not aspire to a third consecutive term) as a liberal, as
someone closer to the West
or at least someone with who could be negotiated against a Putin whom they saw as more stubborn.
Dimitri Medvedev, in 2009, when he was president of Russia.
Photo: EFE
Now Medvedev defends that Russia has the right to a “strategic space,” which must be indivisible from Ukraine.
“Our adversaries have to understand (he says in the speech) once and for all the simple fact that the territories on both sides of the Dnipro (the great river that divides Ukraine in two)
are an integral part of the strategic and historical borders of Russia
".
And he denies any type of negotiation with Zelensky.
They would only negotiate with a post-Zelensky government that recognized that much of Ukraine is actually Russian territory.
The former Russian president also said that relations between Russia and the United States
are even worse than in 1962.
That was the year of the so-called "Missile Crisis," when Moscow placed medium-sized missiles in Cuba capable of carrying nuclear bombs and that they could reach a good part of American territory.
That crisis, which historians see as one of the hottest and most dangerous moments of the 20th century (the powers already had nuclear weapons), is less serious than the current one, according to the former Russian president.
Because this, he told his audience, “is a full-scale war against Russia with American weapons and with the participation of American special forces and advisors.”