US to provide an additional $1bn in security assistance to Ukraine for its efforts in Donbas – as it happened

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Dmitry Medvedev, a long-term ally of Vladimir Putin who is currently deputy chair of the Security Council of Russia, has posted this morning to Telegram a message which gives some insight into the current state of senior level Russian thinking about the situation in Ukraine.

In the message, Medvedev questions a Ukrainian request that it receive energy imports this winter with an option to delay payment for two years. Medvedev says:

Just a question. Who said that in two years Ukraine will even exist on the world map?

There is a lot of excitement. More and more people want to obtain citizenship of the Russian Federation. Residents of the Kherson region today are en masse in queues to submit documents for obtaining Russian citizenship just because Russia can protect, Russia can feed and provide socially for a person in the country, in which a person is the highest social value of the state.