Andrei Illarionov: Putin had been planning war against Ukraine for 11 years

The conflict in Donbas cannot be resolved by negotiations.

A former advisor to Vladimir Putin, economist Andrei Illarionov, says that the conflict in Ukraine is in actual fact a war of Russia against Ukraine. As said by him, the Russian military command had been planning the conflict for at least 11 years, YLE informs with a reference to an Estonian newspaper Postimees.

- The appetite comes with eating, – Andrei Illarionov noted, and reminded about the actions of Russian in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea. He stressed that the conflict in Donbas could not be resolved by the way of talks. The EU sanctions against Russia have been called “an anecdote” by Putin’s former aide. In this way Andrei Illarionov commented the situation in Ukraine yesterday in Riga, where a conference on the issues of security was held.

“All possible decisions are military ones. They do not differ in a way that some decisions are military ones and some are not. Their difference lies in another thing: who will win in this war,” he commented on his report at the conference in a blog, where a video from Riga was published.

At present the former advisor of the Russian president works as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity in the US. Andrei Illarionov was an advisor to Putin in 2000 - 2005. In March 2014 in an interview to a Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet he warned that Putin would like to seize Finland as well. As said by him, Putin wants to restore the borders of the times of the Russian Empire.