Putin ‘jokes’ with Russian officials about annexing Ukraine’s Sumy region
A local official in Russia’s Kursk region told Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that annexing Ukraine’s Sumy region is necessary for national security. “Sumy should be ours,” said Pavel Zolotaryov, head of the Glushkovsky District, at a meeting between municipal leaders and the president. “We can’t live like we’re on a peninsula. We need more — Sumy, at the very least. That’s how I see it. And with you as commander-in-chief, we will win,” Zolotaryov said when Putin asked how far Ukrainian forces should be pushed back from the border to secure the region.
In response, according to state media, Putin “joked” that this ambition is why he appointed Alexander Khinshtein as the region’s acting governor. “He wants more, too,” the president said, adding that Khinshtein has also shown a talent for securing additional federal subsidies.
Later, Khinshtein appeared to support Zolotaryov’s proposal, writing on Telegram: “By the way, my grandfather was born in the Sumy region, so this land is hardly foreign to me.
On May 21, Vladimir Putin visited the Kursk region for the first time since Russia’s Defense Ministry announced in late April that Russian forces had fully recaptured the area, following Ukraine’s incursion in August 2024. At present, Ukrainian forces do not control any populated settlements in the region. Fighting continues along the border between the Kursk and Sumy regions, and Russian troops have advanced into Ukraine, capturing several small towns.
On May 16, during the first direct Russia–Ukraine negotiations in more than three years, Moscow’s delegation reportedly threatened that the Kremlin would seize Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Sumy regions if Kyiv refuses to withdraw its forces from the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, — territories Russia annexed in September 2022 but still does not fully control.
