Vladimir Putin called the new regions ,,historically Russian’’

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that by the end of the decade, the Donbass and Lugansk republics, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, should remain indisputably part of ,,historical Russia’’.

During a meeting of the Supervisory Board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, Putin stated that the four regions can be called Russian only conditionally for the moment, demanding that they be brought ,,to the indicators of the whole of Russia in the horizon of the current decade’’ and, ,,the sooner, the better’’.

,,We know well that the territories we annexed in September 2022 are actually Russian, and the pro-Russian position of the population living there is based on historical tradition’’, the Kremlin leader said.

Last June, speaking at the Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said that the original Ukrainian territories were Kyiv, Zhytomyr and Chernihiv, while the rest of the territories were transferred to Soviet Ukraine during the creation of the USSR. He noted that Donbass was originally planned to be included in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), but was eventually ceded to the Ukrainian SSR to increase the size of the working class in the predominantly agrarian republics.

Russia’s illegal annexation of the four territories in September 2022, which together make up 15 percent of Ukraine, marked the largest forcible takeover of territory in Europe since World War II.