Russia's former president wants to seize a 'buffer zone' in Ukraine. It would take 91 years at Moscow's rate of advance.
Dmitry Medvedev wants a gigantic buffer zone in Ukraine to shield Russia from Western weapons.
But his proposal would take nearly a century for Russia to achieve at its current pace.
Medvedev appears concerned that Western missiles may be able to strike from 550 km away.
Russia's former president, Dmitry Medvedev, has proposed a gigantic "buffer zone" in Ukraine that would put Russian towns and settlements out of range of Western weapons.
"If military aid to the Banderite regime continues, the buffer zone could look like this," Medvedev, who is deputy chairperson of Russia's security council, wrote on his Telegram channel on Sunday.
The post contained a map of Medvedev's suggested zone, which encompasses practically all of Ukraine save for a sliver of land along the Polish border.
His reasoning for such an ambitious zone, according to a separate Telegram post he published on May 18, was to protect Belgorod from long-range Western weapons supplied to Ukraine, such as the Storm Shadow.
The Anglo-French cruise missile has a standard operational range of about 250 km, or 155 miles, though some international think tanks say it can likely hit targets as far as 550 km.
"In other words, Russia must be present there: 550 km plus another 70 to 100 km just to be safe," Medvedev wrote.
But military analysts from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based conflict monitor, wrote on Sunday that this would likely include 587,459 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory.
"Russian forces advanced an average of roughly 14.3 square kilometers per day in Ukraine and Russia between January 1, 2025, and May 24, 2025," the analysts wrote in an assessment.
They added that at such a rate, Russia would take about 91 years to achieve Medvedev's goal.
In March, for example, some estimates said Russia had seized about 142 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in the entire month. The ISW assessed that Russia seized 203 square kilometers that month.
"At this rate of advance, it would take Russian forces approximately 3.9 years to seize the remainder of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts," the ISW added. Ukraine's eastern and southern fronts are spread across those four regions.
Based on previous assessments that Russia has suffered 1,500 killed or wounded per day while advancing, the analysts also wrote that Medvedev's endeavor would cost Russia 50 million soldiers, or about a third of the entire country's population.
The ISW said its estimate also didn't account for a "number of geographic and defensive barriers that Russian forces would have to overcome to seize the remaining 80% of Ukraine." The Dnipro River, for example, is expected to be a significant challenge for Russia to cross.
"Buffer zones" aren't new to Russian strategy. The concept was discussed in the battle for Ukraine's northern Kharkiv oblast, where Russia sought to establish a "buffer zone" that shields the Russian region of Belgorod from Ukrainian fire. Moscow has held a small foothold in Kharkiv since the spring of last year.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin more recently touted another such security zone to protect Kursk by pushing south from the Russian border to the Ukrainian city of Sumy. Last summer, Ukraine invaded Kursk from the Sumy region, but has now largely been beaten back.
Russia has been laying out these strategic goals against the backdrop of President Donald Trump attempting to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia. During the talks, Moscow has demanded that it keep the lands it has occupied since 2014 and that Kyiv cede territory it has managed to defend.
Medvedev has been one of the Kremlin's most aggressive and vocal hawks during the war. He was Russia's president from 2008 to 2012, before becoming its prime minister from 2012 to 2020, exchanging places with Putin as the latter also cycled through both positions at the time.
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