Former Russian president says ‘country will fall apart’ if troops withdraw from Ukraine

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said that Russia’s loss in its continuing war with Ukraine will lead the country to be “torn to pieces”.

“If Russia stops the special military operation without achieving victory, Russia will disappear, it will be torn to pieces,” the deputy chair of the security council of the Russian federation said in a Telegram post on Wednesday.

“If the US stops supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime, the war will end,” the predecessor to Russian president Vladimir Putin said.

Mr Medvedev also called the Russian president’s state of the nation address “an overdue and inevitable decision”, referring to the announcement of temporary suspension from its participation in the new START nuclear arms reduction treaty.

“This is a decision that will have a huge resonance in the world in general and in the United States in particular,” Mr Medvedev said.

“After all, it is obvious to all reasonable forces that if the United States wants Russian defeat, then we are on the verge of a world conflict,” he said, and added that “if the United States wants to defeat Russia, then we have the right to defend ourselves with any weapon, including nuclear.”

The former Russian president also took a swipe at Joe Biden’s speech in Poland where the US president said that if Russia stopped invading Ukraine, it would end the year-long war but if Ukraine stopped defending itself against Russia’s invasion, it would be the end of Ukraine as a nation.

Calling the remarks a “refined lie”, Mr Medvedev said: “Why does he appeal to the people of another country at a time when he is full of domestic problems? With what fright should we listen to a politician from a hostile state that exudes hatred for our Motherland?”

“Why should the citizens of Russia believe the leader of the United States, who unleashed the most wars in the 20th and 21st centuries, but reproach us for aggressiveness?” he said.

The war in Ukraine – the biggest land war in Europe since the second World War – clocks its first year mark on Friday with a grisly battle for capturing Ukrainian territory underway in the besieged country’s eastern sector. After a slow winter stalemate, the last weeks have seen Russia mount infantry assaults across frozen ground in battles described by both sides as the bloodiest of the war.