“I’ve said it before, Russians and Ukrainians are one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours. There’s an old rule that wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, that’s ours,” Vladimir Putin said on Friday. The president made these remarks at an economic forum in St. Petersburg in response to a question about how far the Russian army might advance in Ukraine, pushing beyond the regions Moscow has formally annexed.
Putin also stated that the Russian army might seize the city of Sumy as part of Moscow’s efforts to create a “security zone” after Ukrainian troops invaded part of Russia’s Kursk region last summer. “We drove them out. And now we are forced to create a security zone along the border,” Putin said. “We're not planning to take Sumy. But I do not rule it out.”