Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and prime minister, said on Wednesday that there will “always” be a chance for another conflict between his country and Ukraine after the current war ends.
Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, made the statement in a message posted on his Telegram account.
The longtime close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin is known for making inflammatory statements, often involving threats of nuclear war. As recently as last week, Medvedev warned that Moscow would hit Ukraine with a nuclear strike if Kyiv attacked missile launch sites on Russian territory.
On Wednesday, he wrote that “the existence of Ukraine is mortally dangerous for Ukrainians.”
Photo by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
Medvedev emphasized that he wasn’t just talking about the current political regime in charge of the country but “any, absolutely any form of Ukraine.”
“Why? The existence of an independent state on the historical Russian territories will now be a constant pretext for the resumption of combat actions,” Medvedev said. “No matter who is at the helm of the cancerous growth under the name of Ukraine, this will not add legitimacy to his rule and the legal viability of the ‘country’ itself.”
He continued: “Therefore, the likelihood of a new fight will persist indefinitely. Almost always. Moreover, there is a 100 percent chance of a new conflict, no matter what security papers the West signs with the puppet regime in Kyiv.”
Newsweek reached out to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email on Wednesday for comment.
According to Medvedev, this threat of a future war would not be stopped even if Ukraine joined the European Union or NATO.
“This may happen in 10 or 50 years,” he said of another possible conflict.
The Kremlin official went on to say that Ukrainians are a “practical people at the end of the day” who will come to realize the existence of Ukraine’s statehood is “fatal” for them.
Medvedev said that because of this, when “choosing between eternal war and inevitable death and life, the vast majority of Ukrainians (well, perhaps with the exception of a minimal number of frostbitten nationalists) will ultimately choose life.”
The former president wrote most Ukrainians would choose living in a larger version of Russia rather than face perpetual war, even though they “wish death to the Russians now” and “hate the Russian leadership.”
“They will understand that life in a large common state, which they do not like very much now, is better than death,” he said. “Their deaths and the deaths of their loved ones. And the sooner Ukrainians realize this, the better.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said that not only would his nation not surrender to Russia, but that he would also not agree to any peace negotiations that involve allowing Russia to keep any of the Ukrainian territory it has seized in the war Putin launched in February 2022.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.