On August 19, 2025, Grigory Azarenok and political analyst Andrey Lazutkin discussed the national question on the program “Azarenok. Directly” on the YouTube channel “Belarus. Ryhor Azaronak”:
“There are some degenerates who say, ‘Oh, there are no Ukrainians, no Belarusians, it’s all just something invented by Lenin’ … Whether it was Lenin, or Stalin, or someone else who supposedly created these ethnicities and communities. Well, fine, but with that kind of rhetoric you’re only reinforcing all their propaganda. “When Putin was in Alaska, how did he speak about Ukrainians? You’re reinforcing their propaganda that says Russians are coming to whip you into submission, to destroy your cradle, your songs, your mother tongue, and everything else …” the host said.
“When Putin was in Alaska, how did he speak about Ukrainians? He called them the brotherly Ukrainian people — not one people, but specifically brotherly and Ukrainian. So there’s no denial of that,” Lazutkin said by way of example.
Vladimir Putin repeatedly denied the independence of the Ukrainian people long before the full-scale war began. For example, in 2015 during a rally, the Russian president said: “Dear friends! We in Russia have always believed that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. I think so. I still think so now.”
But his rhetoric was not always like that. In 2004, during a special call-in with Ukrainian citizens, Putin said: “Russia had to realize that the states that emerged in the post-Soviet space are not some quasi-Soviet entities but independent, full-fledged countries, and they must be treated accordingly. … This is nothing less than a full and absolute recognition of Ukraine’s independence — and respect for its independence.”
By 2008, his stance had become less clear-cut. At the NATO summit in Bucharest, speaking about Ukraine’s intention to join the alliance, Putin said: “Of the 45 million people, according to the official census, only 17 million are Russians. There are regions populated entirely by Russians, for example, Crimea — 90 percent are Russian. Ukraine is, in general, a very complicated state.”
A year later — after the war with Georgia and his Munich speech, in which Putin spoke out against the so-called unipolar world and about the NATO threat to Russia — his rhetoric shifted. In 2009, he praised the views of White Guard leader Anton Denikin: “Be sure to read it! He has reflections there on Greater and Lesser Russia, on Ukraine. He says no one should ever be allowed to interfere in relations between us — that has always been Russia’s business alone!”
A couple of months before the full-scale war with Ukraine, during his annual press conference, the Russian president said: “So how did Ukraine come about? Who created it? Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. When he created the Soviet Union.” And in February 2022 — three days before the full-scale invasion: “Modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia. More precisely, by Bolshevik, communist Russia. It was as a result of Bolshevik policies that Soviet Ukraine emerged, which to this day can rightly be called Lenin’s Ukraine — he was its author and architect.”
On unity with Belarusians, the Russian leader speaks less often and usually in the context of his reflections on the Ukrainian people. In Vladimir Putin’s article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” published on the official Kremlin website in 2021, he wrote: “One might argue: if you speak of a single great nation, a triune people, then what difference does it make whether people consider themselves Russian, Ukrainian or Belarusian? I fully agree with that.”
