This so-called 'Medvedev peace formula', Russia's peace formula, is, of course, not a formula for peace, and not even a formula for Russia's victory in the war. It is a formula for the destruction of Ukraine. There are many contradictory points in it. However, if you reduce them all to one denominator, it becomes absolutely clear: The Ukrainian state must cease to exist, its territory must be annexed to the Russian Federation, and before that, it must be robbed by the Russians. Because Dmitry Medvedev demands that the Ukrainian leadership not only make a decision to join the Russian Federation, but also be ready to pay reparations to Russian citizens who died at the front, as well as to those who suffered some kind of loss during the Russian-Ukrainian war.
That is, in any case, for Medvedev and his compatriots, the inhabitants of the territory of modern Ukraine are second-class citizens who must be robbed for the sake of the wealth of those who participated in Putin's war against our country. And the territory of Ukraine, in turn, should be annexed to the Russian Federation so that its citizens have the opportunity to further plunder these conquered and destroyed territories.
And in fact, this is the real program of the Russian political leadership, which concerns the war against Ukraine.
We have repeatedly had to explain that this is not about the need to annex the territories of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, or Zaporizhzhia regions to the Russian Federation. It is not even about the desire to annex the entire east and south of Ukraine. And, by the way, not even about the desire to annex all of Ukraine to the Russian Federation. It's about a political program that implies Russia's return to the borders of the USSR in 1991.
At the same time, we know, in principle, the date that the political leadership of the Russian Federation is planning to reach these borders - 2030, that is, the next presidential election in Russia. And Vladimir Putin, who will be "re-elected" as the head of Russia in a few days, wants to run in 2030 as the leader of a restored empire, a kind of "Russian Union," and to hold these elections throughout the former Soviet Union within the borders lost in the 20th century.
This is the political and military plan that the Russian leadership is trying to implement. And, by the way, I sometimes think that Medvedev is so active in promoting this plan because he may hope to succeed Putin not as president of the Russian Federation, as he has been until now, but as head of this new imperial state with borders from Uzhhorod to Ashgabat.
The war with Ukraine is only a part of Russia's ambitious, man-hating plan. However, it is absolutely clear that without a victory over our country and without the integration of its entire territory - all of it - into the Russian Federation, Russia has virtually no opportunity to force the former Soviet republics to give up their statehood. As we can see, it cannot even force the head of the occupation regime of Belarus, the arrogant Alexander Lukashenko, to do so.
In this situation, the war with Ukraine has become a real existential challenge for Russian President Vladimir Putin, his associates, and the Russian people, who share Putin's vision of the borders of their own state. Because it turned out that the heroic resistance of Ukrainians to Russian plans actually blocked the entire program of development of the Russian state, approved by the Chekists in the 1990s, after the Soviet Union shamefully disappeared from the political map of the world and remained in memory as one of the most disgusting and vile entities in the history of mankind.
In this way, Dmitry Medvedev is expressing what these people really want - to annex the territory of all of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
And there should be no illusions here: Russia will not be satisfied with any individual regions, Crimea, or Donbas. This is only a springboard for the further destruction of the whole of Ukraine. And if the Russians manage to capture some other Ukrainian region, it will also be a mere springboard for the capture of new Ukrainian regions. This is the formula.
The second goal of this entire rabid gang is to rob Ukraine. This is also very important to them, if only because when they eventually came to control the Russian Federation itself, it turned out that most of its property had already been depreciated by the oligarchs of Yeltsin's time. All of this Putin's scum, which, of course, includes Medvedev, were left with scraps from the bar table. And that's why they need new territories to plunder, keeping out representatives of other Russian predatory clans. You can look at what is happening in Crimea or Donbas - it is Putin's associates who are operating there, they are the main number of those who are plundering the occupied regions.
And the third essential goal of the Russians is to humiliate the West and force it to legitimize their conquests. This is already connected with the desire to see the future Russia as an important pole of influence in the world that Putin would like to build, to see Russia as a country that will intimidate and thus control Europe.
So it's a pretty simple and terrible plan that can only be thwarted by Ukrainian resistance and Western participation in this resistance. Otherwise, dark times await us all.
About the author. Vitaly Portnikov, journalist, winner of the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine.
The editors don’t always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.