Moscow: Russia President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that for Russia, Ukraine is not just a neighboring country, but part of its history, drawing attention to the communist origins of the Ukrainian statehood.
“I will stress it once again that for us Ukraine is not just a neighboring country, it is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, spiritual space,” Putin said in a broadcast address to the nation.
The president went on to say that the Ukrainian state was created in its modern iteration by communist Russia through a loss of the latter’s “historical territories” and without the consent of the people who lived there, calling Vladimir Lenin “the author and architect” of Ukraine.
According to the president, archival documents, which include Lenin’s orders, confirm that Donbas was “squeezed into Ukraine.”
“After the [October] Revolution, the main task of the Bolsheviks was to stay in power at all cost,” Putin stated, adding that in order to make it happen, the revolutionaries did everything they could, including signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and meeting all the demands of nationalists.
Putin stressed that the communist leadership was not thinking about the future of alleged utopian fantasies, inspired by the revolution, adding that the germ of nationalism did not disappear and that radicals and nationalists are taking credit for Ukraine’s independence despite having nothing to do with it.
“The considerations of the current political situation, no matter how effective, [and] victorious they seem at a moment in time, should not and cannot serve as the foundation of basic statehood principles under any circumstances,” Putin said.
