In February 2020, Surkov was removed from his role of advisor. On 26 February 2020, he gave an interview to "Aktualnyie kommentarii" where he stated that he actually resigned from the post on his own initiative and the reasons were correctly disclosed by Russian journalists Vladimir Solovyev and Alexei Venediktov. Surkov added that he was primarily involved with Donbass and Ukraine, but since the "context" has changed he decided to leave. He claimed that "There is no Ukraine", adding that "coercion to fraternal relations by force is the only method that has historically proven its effectiveness in the Ukrainian direction. I do not think that some other will be invented".