The hostilities between Russia and Ukraine may end up dragging on for years or even decades, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Saturday. 

For Russia, it is an “existential” conflict and a fight for its very existence, Medvedev, who is currently deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, wrote in a Telegram post. Russia must destroy and fully dismantle the Ukrainian state that is “terrorist in its essence,” making sure “this filth” never re-emerges again, he stressed. 
“Should it take years or even decades, then so be it. We have no choice: either we will destroy their hostile political regime, or the collective West will eventually tear Russia to pieces. And in this case, it will perish with us. Nobody needs this,” Medvedev wrote, presumably hinting at all-out nuclear destruction. 
For the collective West, on the contrary, the ongoing hostilities are a “strange war” and their support for it cannot last forever, Medvedev suggested. With such an approach to the conflict, the West is bound to end up defeated, he added.
“For them, this is a strange war in which people who are strangers to them are dying. And while they do not feel sorry for them, the West will never go beyond the point when its own interests get hurt too much,” the ex-president said, adding that the Western support for Ukraine will eventually dry up, as “someone else’s war sooner or later becomes boring, costly and irrelevant.”
Over the course of the conflict, the West has poured lavish military and economic aid into Ukraine, with numerous top officials repeatedly stating their desire to see Russia defeated on the battlefield. Moscow has consistently urged the West to stop “pumping” Ukraine with assorted weaponry, warning that doing so only prolongs the hostilities and inflicts more damage on common Ukrainians without changing the ultimate outcome.