Security Council official Dmitry Medvedev’s comments come amid reports of an imminent counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces in the besieged city of Bakhmut.
Russian forces may have to advance as far as Kyiv or Lviv in Ukraine, Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev says, amid reports Moscow was losing momentum in the war-torn city of Bakhmut.
Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has issued a barrage of strongly worded statements in the past, blasting the United States and its NATO allies for what he described as their efforts to break up and destroy Russia.
“Nothing can be ruled out here. If you need to get to Kyiv, then you need to go to Kyiv, if to Lviv, then you need to go to Lviv in order to destroy this infection,” Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted Medvedev as saying on Friday.
Medvedev denounced the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin on charges of alleged involvement in the abductions of thousands of children from Ukraine as legally null and void.
He noted the move added to a “colossal negative potential” in the already bitterly strained ties between Russia and the West, and an arrest would equal a declaration of war against Moscow.
The soft-spoken and mild-mannered Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012 when term limits forced Putin to shift into the prime minister’s post, was widely seen by Western officials as more liberal than his mentor.
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