Russia's buffer zone to cover nearly all of Ukraine, says Putin's top aide Medvedev

Russia will create a buffer zone that will cover nearly all of Ukraine, according to Dmitry Medvedev, a top Russian official and a close ally of Vladimir Putin.

Medvedev’s remarks come days after Russian leader Putin said that Russia will create a buffer zone along the country’s borders to safeguard border regions.

The purpose of a buffer zone is to separate the warring sides. While Russian officials have not gone into specifics, their statements suggest the purpose with the buffer zone is to bring distance between Ukrainian forces and their territories so as to minimise Ukraine’s strikes in Russian or Russian-controlled territories.

In a post on his Telegram channel, Medvedev shared the map of what the envisioned buffer zone could look like — see below.

Medvedev is the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, which is the main national security and strategic planning body under Kremlin. He reports directly to Putin. He has previously served as the President (2008-12) and Prime Minister (2012-20) of Russia.

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By leaving just a tiny sliver of territory in the western part of the country, Medvedev has made it clear yet again that the idea behind Putin’s war on Ukraine is the subjugation of entire Ukraine and the erasure of Ukraine as a sovereign nation — one of the core purposes of the Russian invasion.

As part of his revanchist, Cold War-era chekist mentality, Putin does not consider Ukraine as a sovereign nation and that is why his maximalist demands call for the ouster of the country’s elected leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and amendments of the constitution that would reduce the country to a satellite state of Russia.

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What does Putin mean by buffer zone?

Putin on May 22 said that Russia had “decided to create the necessary security buffer zone” along Russia-Ukraine border. He further said that Russian forces were already “suppressing enemy firing points” to create the buffer zone.

While Putin did not go into details, Russian state media later reported that he was referring to the Ukraine’s border with Russia’s Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions that border Ukraine’s Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv regions. However, Russian officials have called for a much bigger buffer zone.

In line with the rationale described above, one Russian general, Viktor Sobolev, said that idea behind buffer zones was to prevent Ukraine’s long-range weapons, such as like HIMARS, from striking Russia or Russian-held territories.

“I think the buffer zone of security should cover the border areas where our new regions [Russia-annexed Zaporizhzhia, Kherson regions] are located, among other things. That is, these are parts of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions,” said Sobolev, according to Kyiv Post.