Russia doesn’t need diplomatic ties with the West any further, former president and top security advisor, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Saturday, as per Reuters. The agency also reported him shrugging off global sanctions on Moscow for invading Ukraine.  

As per Medvedev, the sanctions have provided Russia with a good reason to draw out of dialogues over strategic nuclear stability, and possibly from the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which the Vladimir Putin government signed with Washington in 2020, and was extended in 2021, Reuters reported. 

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Further, they reported his post from the Russian social media platform VK, where Putin’s close ally has said, “We don’t especially need diplomatic relations… It’s time to padlock the embassies and continue contacts looking at each other through binoculars and gun sights”. He also reiterated that the sanctions by the West wouldn’t change a single thing, Reuters said. 

Reuters also reported him saying that Moscow would continue its military operations until it reached the goals, which Putin has outlined to be “demilitarization” and “denazification“. 

He also wrote. “The sanctions are being imposed for one simple reason – political impotence arising from their (the West’s) inability to change Russia’s course”, as per Reuters. 

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Medvedev also condemned the decision by the Council of Europe, a rights watchdog, to suspend Russian membership. However, he noted that this “unfair” decision gave Russia the chance to turn its back on the organization too, and restore the death penalty for dangerous criminals, Reuters reported. 

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Russia has continued its assault on Ukraine, and on the third consecutive day, the forces are trying to make their way into Kyiv, the capital city. President Putin started off the attack by recognizing the independence of Ukrainian breakaway territories and then sending in troops as a peacekeeping force, before declaring the special military operation on Ukrainian soil.