DISINFO: Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not about capturing new territory
SUMMARY
Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine is not about acquiring new lands. As the largest country in the world, Russia does not need any more territory.
RESPONSE
The claim is part of an ongoing pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
For a country that does not "need" any new lands, the Russian Federation has been quite prolific in illegally occupying foreign territory in the past decade. In February 2014, Russia invaded and illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. In autumn 2022, it used sham referenda in an attempt to annex the above-mentioned oblasts, as well as the Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhia and Kherson.
High-ranking Russian officials have explicitly stated that large swathes of Ukrainian territory rightfully belong to Russia. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has stated that Russia would "liberate" what he described as "historic Russian territories" of Ukraine, while the Moscow-installed head of annexed Crimea stated that the "Russian cities" of Odesa, Kharkiv, and Mykolayiv "should be ours by historical right."