Ukraine: “All of it is ours,” claims Russian President Putin
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Hoping to ‘reclaim’ Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that the whole of Ukrainian territory is part of Russia, the media reported.
Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union (USSR) as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR), from 1922 to 1991. It was one of the founding republics of the USSR of the Communist era.
“Where the foot of a Russian soldier steps, that is ours,” said Putin, who annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, and launched a “special military operation” against the rest of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives so far and caused wanton destruction, besides leaving behind millions of refugees in neighbouring countries.
Speaking at an international economic forum in St. Petersburg, imperial Russia’s original capital, Putin said on Friday that Russians and Ukrainians were one people, “and in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours,” and said he did not rule out Russia taking control of the Ukrainian city of Sumy soon.
However, he said Russia had never doubted Ukraine’s right to sovereignty, but noted that when Ukraine declared its independence in 1991 it was as a “neutral state.” He refrained from saying that Ukraine inched closer to Europe and wanted to become part of NATO, which may have prompted Russia to invade it.
President Putin, who says Russia is fighting in Ukraine to protect its own security, was answering a question about Russia’s war aims.
“We have a saying, or a parable,” Putin said, “Where the foot of a Russian soldier steps, that territory is ours.”
Kyiv and its Western allies have rejected Moscow’s claims to four Ukrainian regions and Crimea as illegal, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly rejected the notion that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
Putin said Russian forces were carving out a buffer zone in Ukraine’s Sumy region to protect Russian territory and said he did not rule out those same troops taking control of the regional capital of Sumy.
