Medvedev wants Ukrainian city of Odessa brought 'home' to Russia

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has called for the annexation of the Ukrainian port city of Odessa and possibly taking the capital Kiev at a later date.

"Odessa, come back home," Medvedev, who is currently the deputy head of the Russian Security Council, said during an interview with media representatives, published on his Telegram channel on Thursday.

The former president claimed that the city was Russian in terms of its language, history and the people who lived there. "This is our Russian city," he emphasized. Kiev would probably also have to be conquered at some point, he added later in the interview.

Medvedev, who is still considered a confidant of President Vladimir Putin, said that he did not know where Russia should stop its advance. Putin himself has also repeatedly referred to Odessa as a Russian city, but has never referred to a possible capture of the Black Sea port as clearly as Medvedev has now done.

Medvedev described the capture of Kiev as a necessity, "if not now, then sometime later." He claimed that the city is Russian in terms of its roots, but is run by "an international brigade of Russia's enemies."

Russia failed in its attempt to take Kiev at the beginning of its full-scale invasion almost two years ago, and Odessa has also remained under Ukrainian control.

Medvedev, who is 58 and was president of Russia from 2008 to 2012, has been trying to make a name for himself as one of the hardliners in Moscow since the outbreak of the war.

He has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons against the West. Should Russia be pushed back to its 1991 borders, the country would not only drop nuclear bombs on Kiev, but also on Berlin, London and Washington, he said recently.

The borders of 1991 that he refers to are the internationally recognized frontiers of Russia and Ukraine in place before the annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Moscow in 2014 and before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.