Category: News

Russian state media is undergoing a marked tone shift following the Ukrainian invasion of its Kursk region last week, with RIA Novosti columnist Victoria Nikiforova arguing a negotiated settlement with President Volodymyr Zelensky is off the table and that all Ukraine must be taken over.

“There should be no ‘Ukraine’, this entire space should be de-Nazified, cleansed and rendered harmless. Whatever efforts and sacrifices are required of us, we are ready for them,” she writes for the state-owned news agency, invoking the 17th-century wars between the Tsardom of Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, when the Russians “gnawed these lands from Poland for decades, broke off bit by bit, retreated, concluded armistices and again steadily, inexorably moved forward until Kiev became Russian.”

Ukraine’s offensive in Kursk has “changed everything,” Nikiforova states, saying polls showing “the Russian population was in favor of a peaceful resolution” are now out of date.

Kursk was the scene of one of the last decisive battles between Axis and Soviet forces in 1943. Nikiforova invokes the memory of the Second World War in her article, calling Zelensky “the Jewish Nazi” and warning the “enemy is on our soil for the first time since the Great Patriotic War,” with “German infantry fighting vehicles… driving around the Kursk region.”

A LONG WAR. 

Ukrainian forces, using British tanks and American Bradley and Stryker combat vehicles, among other NATO equipment, have seized about as much Russian territory in the surprise offensive as the Russians have seized Ukrainian territory all year, embarrassing and infuriating the Kremlin.

It is a high-stakes gamble for Zelensky, who has been steadily losing territory to the Russians all year. In May, a new front was opened against him near Kharkov, Ukraine’s second-largest city. A heavy defeat following initial gains would leave the Ukrainians desperately short of reserves in sectors where Russian forces continue to grind forward.

“We are fighting for our independence and are ready to fight for it for years and decades, until we reach Lvov—and, if necessary, even further,” Nikiforova writes, referring to the largest city in western Ukraine, which the Ukrainians call Lviv, and possibly Poland and other NATO members to its west.

“In the end, the answer to the question ‘who does Russia border?’ is: ‘Russia borders whoever it wants,'” she insists.