"I collect stamps, I am a philatelist… Many of the countries whose stamps I examine no longer exist… So, we need to seriously think about what we are doing and where we need to go. We must clearly define that for ourselves… Otherwise, we could just become the subject of the next postage stamp," Budanov said in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist.
In July, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Ukraine had long since become a Western colony and could end up losing its statehood.