Medvedev
© Sputnik / Ekaterina Shtukina
The former leader of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, announced today on Telegram the response to the proposal of former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, that Ukraine join the Alliance without its territories currently occupied by Russia.

Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, argued that it was essentially an admission that Crimea and the Donbass are no longer Ukraine.
- It's not bad, but it's important to move on. We have to admit that Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kiev and practically everything else is not Ukraine at all - said Medvedev.
He says that there are three more steps before admitting the obvious, and he said about Zelensky that he is not a president, but a usurper, the Ukrainian language is not a language, and Ukraine is not a country but artificially collected territories, the Guardian reports.
"Therefore, even without the territories occupied by Russia, Ukraine cannot be accepted into NATO because it is not a state," explained Medvedev.
This idea that Ukraine is not an independent country, but is a historical part of Russia, has been repeated in the rhetoric of the Russian leadership for a long time. Vladimir Putin said this at a NATO summit in 2008 and again in 2014 when he justified the illegal annexation of Crimea.