Putin doesn’t want to restore Soviet Union – Kremlin

The Russian president believes it is impossible to revive the communist superpower, according to his spokesman

Russian President Vladimir Putin has no desire to restore the Soviet Union, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

Putin has personally said so on many occasions, Peskov noted, and reiterated the president’s view in response to claims about Russian ambitions made by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a recent interview with ARD.

Contemplating the revival of the USSR “would be disrespectful to our partners and allies in the Commonwealth of Independent States and other more advanced integrational forms,” Peskov said, referring to an intergovernmental group of post-Soviet nations.

The Russian official also described as “absolute nonsense” Merz’s claim that Moscow is preparing for an attack on NATO. Politicians from European members of the US-led military bloc have been using the claim to justify the EU’s multibillion-euro rearmament plans. Russian officials argue that fear-mongering is being used to distract Europeans from domestic problems and funnel public resources into arms production, benefiting contractors.

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Western commentators have claimed for years that Putin is driven by nostalgia for the USSR, citing his remarks that its collapse was the “greatest geopolitical disaster” of the 20th century. The Russian leader has said on many occasions that he was disturbed when ethnic Russians found themselves divided by national borders, among other negative consequences of the dissolution. However, people vying for a Soviet revival “have no head,” he has said.