Context: During a working trip to the Shklou District on July 13, 2026, Aleksandr Lukashenko commented on the situation regarding retransmission stations in Belarus. He stated that the Belarusian authorities “did not install the relay stations against Ukraine, did not switch them on, and have no intention of switching them off.” On June 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Lukashenko of using equipment in territories bordering Ukraine to help coordinate Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian cities. At the 17th annual Kupala Night Festival in the agricultural town of Aleksandria in the Shklou District on July 11, Lukashenko stated that he would like to see more Ukrainians at the event and expressed confidence that there will soon be a large Ukrainian presence.
On the July 13, 2026 episode of the CTV program Azaryonok. Napryamuyu, Ryhor Azaronak recalled Aleksandr Lukashenko’s remarks that Ukraine must be brought back “into the fold of our Slavic people.” He said that this return is being hindered by people who promote the idea that Ukraine was created by Lenin.
“I was asked the same question in the Russian Federation: ‘How do you, in Belarus, envision victory?’ I recalled Aleksandr Lukashenko’s memorable words: ‘Bring Ukraine back into the fold of our Slavic people.’ But, forgive me, it is idiotic and absurd to go to them and say: ‘You don’t exist. You are nobody. You were invented by Lenin, the Freemasons, Austria-Hungary, the Vatican, and reptiloids. You are actually… Now, all of you - heel!’ That’s nonsense. Aleksandr Lukashenko doesn’t share that view. [That] is the official position of the Russian Federation, and [it is also the position of] the entire Russian information sphere that, in one way or another, works for the state and for victory. As for all those network hamsters — wired, fibre-optic and otherwise — as well as idiots, rats and all sorts of unhinged people who, it seems to me, have long been bought off by people from CIPSO [a Russian-language abbreviation used here to refer to psychological operations units of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine — ed.], they are, of course, the ones who come out with things like that,” Azaronak said.
However, the claim that the Soviet regime created modern Ukraine was promoted not only by anonymous internet users. It was voiced by Russian President Vladimir Putin. For example, in an official televised address on February 21, 2022, he stated: Soviet Ukraine arose as a result of Bolshevik policy and can, with full justification, still be called ‘Ukraine named after Vladimir IlyichLenin’ today.” As early as July 2021, Putin wrote the following in an article titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”:
“...modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era.”
Former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Russian Federation’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev used similar rhetoric. In a March 2026 article for Ekspert magazine, he explicitly referred to Ukraine as a “nonexistent country.”
Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov made similar remarks. In October 2025, he stated:
“This Nazi pseudo-state has absolutely no right to exist. I don’t understand why we are seriously treating this failed state as a distinct entity at all.”
In other words, the idea that Lenin invented Ukraine was promoted not only by anonymous users whom Azaronak claimed had been paid by Ukrainian PsyOps units, but also publicly voiced by top Russian officials and a pro-Kremlin TV presenter.
