loading…
Former Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, claimed that Ukraine has no future in its current form. Photo/The Moscow Times
MOSCOW – Ex president Russia Dmitri Medvedev, claims that Ukraine has no future in its present form. He outlined three possible scenarios for the country’s collapse and assessed the risks of a new conflict in Europe as well as a global war.
“This conflict will last a long time. For decades, maybe. This is a new reality,” said the former Russian leader who is now deputy chairman of Russia’s national security council, as quoted by Russia Today, Friday (26/5/2023).
“It is necessary to destroy the nature of the Nazi rule in Kiev,” said Medvedev, claiming that otherwise the conflict could drag on, with three years of truce, two years of conflict, rinse and repeat.
In a Telegram post late on Thursday, Medvedev explained that the collapse of the Ukrainian state was inevitable, and could occur quickly, or through relatively slow erosion, with the gradual loss of the remaining elements of sovereignty.
He went so far as to spell out exactly how he believed the “Kiev regime” would disappear.
In the first scenario, Medvedev claims, parts of Western Ukraine will come under the control of European Union (EU) neighboring countries and eventually be annexed by them. The remaining no-man’s-land sandwiched between Russia and the EU protectorate will become the “new Ukraine”, still struggling to join NATO and posing a threat to Russia.
In that case, he believed, armed conflict would quickly reignite, likely becoming permanent with the risk of rapidly escalating into a full-blown world war.
In the second scenario, Ukraine would gain a government-in-exile but de-facto no longer exist, with control of its entire territory split between the European Union and Russia. In that case, according to Medvedev, the risk of world war is moderate, but terrorist activities by Ukrainian neo-Nazis in the territories annexed by the EU neighbors will be protracted.
Medvedev said he preferred the third scenario, in which the western regions of Ukraine voluntarily join their EU neighbours, while the eastern and some central regions exercise the right to self-determination sealed in Article 1 of the UN Charter.
