An aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin says Ukraine may cease to exist “altogether” in 2025.

“It can’t be ruled out that Ukraine will cease to exist at all in the coming year,” the aide, Nikolai Patrushev, who headed Russia’s Security Council for 16 years before he was replaced in 2024 by former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, said in an interview with the pro-Kremlin publication Komsomolskaya Pravda, reports The Moscow Times Tuesday.

He also claimed that the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv collapsed “long before” the 2022 invasion because of its “violent enforcement of neo-Nazi ideology and rampant Russophobia,” which he said is “destroying once prosperous cities in Ukraine, including Kharkiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Dnepropetrovsk.”

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