Putin says Russia and Ukraine are one family: “All of Ukraine belongs to us”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the 20th that the whole of Ukraine is “our” territory in his eyes, emphasizing that Russians and Ukrainians are “one family” and that they do not seek Ukraine’s surrender to end the war, but hope that Ukraine will become a neutral country.
Currently, Russia controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, more than 99% of the land in the Luhansk region, more than 70% of the land in Donetsk, the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, and scattered land in Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk. Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that he believes that Russians and Ukrainians are one family, and from this perspective, “the whole of Ukraine is ours.”
Putin said that he did not question Ukraine’s independence and the efforts made by Ukrainians for sovereignty, but emphasized that when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Ukraine declared independence, Ukraine also declared that it would take a neutral position. Putin pointed out that if the opportunity to restore peace is to be created, the Moscow authorities hope that Ukraine will accept the current fact that the area of Ukraine controlled by Russia is larger than the state of Virginia in the United States.
In response to Putin’s remarks, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on the social media platform X that Putin’s self-serving remarks completely ignored the US efforts to promote peace. Sybiha said: “While the United States and other countries continue to call for an immediate end to the killing, Russia’s top war criminal is discussing plans to take more Ukrainian territory and kill more Ukrainians.”
