MOSCOW (Dispatches) - Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that the conflict in Ukraine could last for decades and that negotiations with Ukraine were impossible as long as Ukraine’s Western-backed President Volodymyr Zelensky was in power.
Speaking during his visit to Vietnam, former president Medvedev said, “This conflict will last a very long time, most likely decades.”
“As long as there is such a power in place, there will be, say, three years of truce, two years of conflict, and everything will be repeated,” he said, reiterating Moscow’s claim that Ukraine is a Nazi state.
Medvedev, who is currently serving as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, has warned earlier that if Russia loses, a nuclear war could break out.
“The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger a nuclear war,” Medvedev said in a post on Telegram, adding that “nuclear powers have never lost major conflicts on which their fate depends.”
He said Russia could not trust any truce with the current rulers of Kiev as the conflict would simply erupt again and so the very nature of the current government of Ukraine would have to be destroyed.
Negotiations, he said, with “the clown Zelensky” were impossible.
“Everything always ends in negotiations, and this is inevitable, but as long as these people are in power, the situation for Russia will not change in terms of negotiations.”
“There are irreversible laws of war. If it comes to nuclear weapons, there will have to be a pre-emptive strike,” Medvedev said.
Russia says Washington would never allow it to arm a country bordering the United States, and the Kremlin says the West is already essentially fighting an undeclared war with Russia.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he planned to speak with President Putin “in due course” and considered the prospect of resuming contacts after the near-total breakdown in relations since the Ukraine war.
“My last telephone call was some time ago,” said Scholz. “But I plan to speak to Putin again in due course.”
In early December, the two leaders spoke by phone, during which, Scholz urged Putin to withdraw Moscow’s forces from Ukraine, while the Russian leader accused the West of pursuing “destructive” policies.
Since then, tensions between Moscow and Berlin have escalated, particularly over the Scholz government’s decision in January to send German-made heavy battle tanks to Ukraine.
Scholz insisted that his goal was to “actively support Ukraine” while “avoiding direct conflict between NATO and Russia.”