MOSCOW, January 30. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s decree on "Russian territories historically inhabited by Ukrainians" sounds "absurdly ridiculous," Nail Mukhitov, an aide to the secretary of the Russian Security Council, said in an interview with TASS.

"Zelensky, as Washington’s henchman, has recently signed a decree in which he shamelessly described lands that have been Russian since time immemorial as Ukrainian. He ordered his government and the National Academy of Sciences to concoct their own version of Ukrainian history and incorporate it into the educational curriculum. However, Zelensky is well aware that the actual situation is the complete opposite [of his ahistorical claims]," the security official noted.

Mukhitov pointed out that residents of Donbass and the region historically known as Novorossiya "have always viewed Great Russia as their native homeland." "And now to argue that jurisdiction over the Krasnodar and Voronezh regions [should somehow go to Ukraine] is simply absurdly ridiculous," he stressed.

The aide to the Russian Security Council secretary noted that this month marked the 370th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Agreement in 1654, under which Zaporizhian Cossack forces pledged allegiance to the Russian tsar, thereby unifying the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. "Hundreds of residents of Melitopol [in the Zaporozhye Region] went to lay flowers at the monument to Hetman (Cossack chieftain - TASS) Bogdan Khmelnitsky, who said back in 1654: 'Forever with the Russian people.' It stayed like that for centuries until the Maidan coup was engineered in Ukraine in 2014," Mukhitov said.

Earlier, Zelensky signed a decree making ahistorical claims that large swaths of southern Russia, including the Krasnodar, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and Rostov regions, are lands that have traditionally been populated by Ukrainians.