Moscow- Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief of staff has criticized Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's initiative to build a wall along Ukraine's border with Russia.
“Building a wall would make any relations whatsoever impossible to restore, in my view. By the way, I’ve heard a fresh joke – the Yatseniuk wall is a low-cost version of the Mannerheim Line. But being serious, I’m sure there will be no wall at the end of the day. Rhetoric is one thing and practice is another,” Sergei Ivanov said in an interview a transcript of which is due to be printed in Sept. 22 issue of Russian government daily Rossiyskaya Gazyeta.
However, the current estrangement between Russia and Ukraine “won’t go by itself, it will take time and effort” to overcome, he said.
Ivanov also said many ordinary Russians had “welcomed refugees [from eastern Ukraine] without any conditions and shared their homes, food and clothes with them without asking for anything in return.”
“Our fellow citizens don’t see Ukrainians as foreigners. If they were refugees from another country, I would venture a surmise that this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
