However, Putin claimed that Ukraine continued to claim a share of the Soviet Union's gold reserves and foreign assets, and the Ukrainian government has wished to continue to enjoy privileges associated with close ties to Russia "while remaining free from any obligations," and that Ukraine had used its ties with Russia as a threat to blackmail the West into giving it greater preferences.
Finally, he then ended the speech by calling for the Ukrainian government to "immediately stop hostilities," or else warned of serious consequences, quoting "the responsibility for the possible continuation of the bloodshed will lie entirely on the conscience of Ukraine's ruling regime.
"[5][6][7] According to the historian, professor of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv Kostiantyn Kondratyuk, Putin "gets mixed up" in Ukrainian history purposefully, creating his own, completely distorted vision of the mentioned events, returning to the rhetoric of the times of the Russian Empire.
[9] Before the occupation by the Bolsheviks in 1919-1920, Ukraine was 200,000 square kilometers larger than the size in which it left the Soviet Union," said Candidate of Historical Sciences Oleksandr Alfiorov.
[9] According to Oleksandr Tkachenko, the Minister of Culture of Ukraine, the story that Putin tells never existed, except in his head because of his resentment against the entire civilized world and grief over the fact that someone can be free without his permission.
"[15] Kristaps Andrejsons of Foreign Policy wrote that the speech was a "messy, incoherent, angry rant that is difficult to make sense of but that put forward a dark vision of renewed national glory" that "rightly has neighboring states, once victims of Russian imperialism themselves, highly worried.