Former Putin adviser from Washington spoke about the 19-year war between Russia and Ukraine
The war between Russia and Ukraine has been going on for 19 years. This conclusion was reached by the fugitive Russian economist, former adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who joined the liberals, Andrei Illarionov.
On air on the UkrLife Internet channel, Illarionov said that this “war” began in 2003, along with disputes over the ownership of the island of Tuzla in the Sea of Azov, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“If we are talking only about that stage of Putin’s war against Ukraine or the Russian-Ukrainian war, which, even in the form of a conventional war, has been going on for more than eight years, we must constantly remind ourselves, and our listeners, and viewers, that something what started on February 24 is just another stage in a long war that is going on against Ukraine,” he reasoned.
“If we are talking about a war at all, a big Russian-Ukrainian war, then its beginning can be correctly attributed to 2003, to September 2003, to the first attempt to seize Ukrainian territory - the Tuzla Spit in the Kerch Strait. And therefore, if we want to be more or less accurate, we must say that the Russian-Ukrainian war has been going on for at least 19 years.
There were several stages in this war. The Tuzla Spit stage, then there was the Cold War episode of 2008, associated with Putin’s statements, the presentation of territorial claims to Ukraine in relation to the so-called Novorossiya at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, and with statements by Putin and Medvedev against Ukraine during the Russian-Georgian war, when the Ukrainian authorities tried to counteract the withdrawal of the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol.
Then, of course, we will talk about the year 14, about the occupation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Donbass, and the next major stage is February 24, 2022. The stage we are going through now. Therefore, at a minimum, this is the fourth major episode of the 19-year Russian-Ukrainian war,” Illarionov said.
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