Putin falsely claims that Ukraine is not a real country

Putin said in a speech: "Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood. There has never been a sustainable statehood in Ukraine". Despite substantial evidence of a unique Ukrainian culture prior to then, he believed that Ukraine was a creation of the Soviet Union under its first leader, Vladimir Lenin. Putin also claimed that Ukraine was historically part of Russia's territory.

He said in his speech: "Let me emphasize once again that Ukraine for us is not just a neighboring country. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space". Putin declared that Russia will recognize the two separatist regions of Ukraine as separate entities. He stated in his speech that the Donbass area, which includes the two separatist regions, should never have been part of Ukraine in the first place.

But in fact, since the 1700s, Russia has been at the center of a vast empire that included areas beyond its current borders, including Ukraine. After the foundation of the Soviet Union, most of those territories remained under Moscow's control, but several, particularly Ukraine, became independent states when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s.