Russia to occupy “remaining Ukrainian lands” after ceasefire: Medvedev

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and prime minister, said on Wednesday that Russia will seek to occupy “remaining [Ukrainian] lands” even if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agrees to the Kremlin’s most recent conditions for peace.

Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, “reaffirmed that Russia would not accept or uphold any negotiated peace settlements with Kyiv short of Ukrainian capitulation, the destruction of the entire Ukrainian state, and the full occupation of Ukraine,” the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank, said in its latest analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.

The prospect of peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow has been raised multiple times since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Kremlin has specified a few conditions Russia considers nonnegotiable, including that Ukraine must accept the September 2022 annexation of four of its regions-Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia-following referendums called by Putin that were deemed illegal by the international community.

On June 14, Putin said Ukraine must also renounce any plans to join the NATO military alliance.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has said that any peace deal must invalidate the September 2022 annexations of its territory, and that the Crimean Peninsula, which Putin annexed in 2014, must once again be considered part of Ukraine.

In a post on his Telegram channel, Medvedev said Zelensky agreeing to Putin’s most recent conditions for peace will not constitute the “end of the Russian military operation” in Ukraine.

“Even after signing the papers and accepting defeat, the remaining radicals, after regrouping their forces, will sooner or later return to power, inspired by Russia’s Western enemies. And then the time will come to finally crush the reptile. To drive a long steel nail into the coffin lid of Bandera’s quasi-state,” he said.

Russia will eventually return “remaining [Ukrainian] lands to the bosom of the Russian land,” Medvedev wrote.

Medvedev was likely referring to Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist who sided with the Nazis during WWII and created the Ukrainian National Army, which fought against the Soviet Union.

Newsweek has contacted Russia’s Foreign Ministry for comment by email.

The ISW said Medvedev “insinuated that the Kremlin plans to continue its conquest of Ukraine following a negotiated peace agreement.”

His post “also indicates that the Kremlin believes that the full conquest of Ukraine will be easier if Kyiv accepts deeply unpopular ceasefire agreements and concessions at the current stage of the war, in anticipation that Ukrainian society would demand a government change that could benefit the Kremlin,” the think tank assessed.

“The Kremlin has misread domestic Ukrainian sentiment before, however. Kyiv’s officials have long warned that the Kremlin launched an elaborate ‘Maidan 3’ information campaign, which aims to undermine the Ukrainian government likely in order to trigger a government change and establish a pro-Kremlin government in Ukraine,” the ISW added.

Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born political economist at the University of Chicago, said Medvedev’s statement that Russia will continue the war until the “total destruction of any independent Ukraine” makes “no sense” given that it contradicts Putin’s own public line on the matter.

“It doesn’t make sense if it’s a lie-it works against recent Putin’s entreaties for ‘peace for territories,’ which Russia pushes across many channels, diplomatic and informational,” said Sonin on X, formerly Twitter. “It doesn’t make sense if Medvedev tells the truth (which I suspect he does)-this is exactly the truth that politicians hide, not disclose.”

“Of course, it’s possible to read this as some sort of sycophantic pandering,” Sonin added.

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Originally published at https://www.newsweek.com on July 11, 2024.