Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russians and Ukrainians are one nation - part of his efforts to justify the ongoing war in Ukraine. Putin responded to a question after his speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 20 that "Ukraine is Russian", writes the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Putin has repeatedly demonstrated that he does not consider Ukraine to be an independent state with its own history, identity and culture, separate from Russia. This was evident in his 2021 essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" and the false claim that Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians are part of one historical people, news.bg specified.
He is trying to present Russia as interested in negotiations to end the war, claiming that Russia is not seeking "Ukraine's surrender".
The Kremlin often calls on Ukraine to recognize that Russia is in a stronger negotiating position given the situation on the battlefield.
Putin claims that Russian actions in the northern part of Sumy Oblast are due to Ukraine's shelling of Russian border areas. On June 19, in an interview with the Kremlin's TASS agency on SPIEF, the head of the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), Leonid Pasechnik, stated that a "buffer zone" should be 20 to 30 kilometers deep to protect the occupied Luhansk region from strikes by Ukrainian optical drones.
On June 18, the first deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, Alexei Zhuravlev, called on Russia to create a buffer zone in the Dnipropetrovsk region along the Dnieper River to protect the occupied Donetsk region from Ukrainian HIMARS strikes.
Kremlin officials have previously justified the Russian offensive in the northern Kharkiv region as an attempt to protect the city of Belgorod from Ukrainian shelling and MLRS strikes.
Pasechnyk and Zhuravlev's proposed buffer zones would extend into eastern Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions - two areas that Russia has not yet illegally annexed. Russian officials have recently made similar calls for Russia to expand its territorial ambitions, asking Putin to seize the city of Sumy and urging Russia to take control of the part of the Dnieper River that runs through Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
The deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Colonel Pavlo Palisa, also said on June 5 that Russia was likely seeking to create a buffer zone along the northern Ukrainian-Russian border by the end of 2025. and intends to occupy all of Ukraine on the eastern (left) bank of the Dnieper River, including eastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and all of Kharkiv Oblast, by the end of 2026.
The Kremlin continues to demonstrate that it will not be satisfied with seizing Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson Oblasts and will use the cover of buffer zones to justify its territorial ambitions beyond these four regions.
The Kremlin continues to prioritize maintaining the facade of economic stability, pursuing economic policies that are likely to exacerbate Russia's economic instability. Putin said on June 20 that Russia's debt is not growing and refuted claims that the Russian economy is shrinking.
Putin said that the idea that the Russian economy is tied only to raw materials and dependent on hydrocarbon exports is "outdated", but that Russia is seeking to increase its exports other than oil and gas.
Putin said that inflation in Russia had fallen to 9.6% as of June 16 and that he expects inflation to fall to seven percent by the end of 2025.
Putin used his speech to focus on reducing poverty levels in Russia.
Putin also highlighted Russia's low unemployment rate, claiming that it had stabilized at around 2.3% since October 2024. However, Putin did not address the labor shortage in Russia that is causing this low employment rate, unlike his speech at SPIEF in 2024, in which he acknowledged that Russia suffers from a labor shortage and stressed the need for skilled migrant labor to boost Russia's economic growth.
ISW has observed reports that domestic consumers in Russia continue to face rising prices for basic food items, such as potatoes and butter.
Putin also failed to acknowledge the growing detrimental effects of high interest rates of 20 percent on Russia's industrial sector. The head of Russian steelmaker "Severstal" Alexander Shevelev warned on June 19 that metallurgical production facilities are at risk of closure due to low consumer demand and high interest rates.
Ukraine and Russia have held the sixth exchange of prisoners of war in accordance with the Istanbul Agreements of June 2.
Ukrainian officials and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed that Ukraine and Russia exchanged an unspecified number of seriously wounded and sick prisoners of war on June 20.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on June 19 appointed Brigadier General Gennady Shapovalov as commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces. Shapovalov was the Ukrainian representative to the NATO Security Assistance and Training Center for Ukraine (NSATU) in Germany and the commander of Ukraine's Southern Operational Command in 2024.