MOSCOW, March 13. /TASS/. Russia will remain Russia and any proposals to rename it Muscovy can only be laughed off, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, told the media on Monday.
"This, such messages and similar decisions, should probably be regarded as a bad joke. There have been many such jokes about this, I don’t think that any more jokes need to be made. I repeat once again, you can only laugh this off. Regardless of what some may call it, Russia will remain a great power, a great country. It will remain Russia," Peskov said.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky instructed Prime Minister Denis Shmygal to "carefully consider" the possibility of renaming Russia "Muscovy" in the Ukrainian language. This instruction was a response to a petition that had collected 25,000 signatures necessary for its consideration. The petition also suggests replacing the "Russian Federation" with "Moscow Federation" and "Russian" with "Muscovite."
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that such orders from Zelensky were fresh evidence of an attempt to convert Ukraine into "anti-Russia". Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev remarked that Russia had some counter-proposals: he suggested calling Ukraine the "Bandera Reich".