One of the officials appointed by the Kremlin to the position of the head of the occupying power in Ukraine called on the Russian occupation of the Baltic countries and Finland to return their “subjects” home, Kyiv Independent reports.

“The Russian Empire, when it faltered after the Bolshevik coup and took a different path of development, lost many of its subjects. I am not talking about the lost territories now, that is self-evident, I understand that it is Helsinki, as well as Warsaw and Revel (not the historical name of the Estonian capital Tallinn) and Liepaja (not a city in Latvia),” said the Head of the Russian-appointed administration at in the occupied territories of the Zaporizhzhia region Yevhen Balytskyi.

“And, of course, the entire Baltic region is our land, and our people live there,” he notes regarding the “subjects” of the former Russian Empire, which was ruled by tsars until 1917.

“The fact that they were turned into a tame herd of trembling creatures – this must be corrected. And with the power of Russian weapons, we will correct the situation. I do not believe in any diplomacy in this case. Perhaps diplomacy should always be present, but in this case, I think that we can return all this (to Russia) only by the power of Russian weapons,” says Balytskyi.

“Let’s return our people, our subjects, who used to belong to the Russian Empire, and today belong to the Russian Federation!” – he urged, adding that this must be done so that “the whole world does not turn into Sodom and Gomorrah, as it is now happening in Europe!”.

Balytskyi made the comments in an interview with RIA Novosti, one of Russia’s state news agencies, late last month, but they only gained attention in the past few days after a segment of the interview in which he mentioned the occupation of Finland and the Baltic countries was translated and shared in social networks:

Who is Yevhen Balytskyi, the “governor” planted by the Russians in Zaporizhzhia

One of the reasons why his statements have remained relatively unnoticed until now may be that he is less well-known, including to the Russian public, compared to the other three leaders installed by the Russian occupying forces in the Ukrainian territories they control: Denys Pushylin in Donetsk, Leonid Pasechinik in Luhansk and Volodymyr Saldo in Kherson.

Balytskyi was less active in the Russian information space, because, unlike the other three leaders of the occupation administrations installed by Moscow in Ukraine, the region he leads was not subjected to large-scale attacks by Ukrainian forces. until June of this year, when Kyiv’s summer offensive shifted most of its forces to Zaporizhzhia.

A former deputy of the Zaporizhia Regional Council, and then the Kyiv Parliament from 2012 to 2019 from the Party of Regions, the most powerful pro-Russian political entity in Ukraine, Balytskyi was appointed by the Kremlin on April 9, 2022 as the head of the Verkhovna Rada. administration, which Moscow established in the occupied territories of the region in the south of Ukraine.

From this position, Balytsky lobbied for the organization of a referendum here on “unification” with Russia and participated in the ceremony last September, at which President Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of Ukrainian territories.

After the annexation, Russia changed his official title, recognizing him as the “voivode” of Zaporozhye.

His comments came as a growing number of Russian propagandists, officials and military leaders are openly advocating the restoration not only of the Soviet Union, but also of the Russian Empire, also known as the Tsarist Empire, which preceded it and included numerous territories.

For example, in May, the former president and prime minister of Russia Dmytro Medvedev, now the vice-president of the Moscow Security Council, proposed to return Poland to the Russian Federation, the “successor” of the Russian Empire, according to him.

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