A Maidan activist who fled to Kyiv told how Sevastopol loved Ukraine
Maidan activist Dmitry Belotserkovets, who fled from Sevastopol, now a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, convinced listeners on the air of Kyiv Radio NV that the younger generation of Crimeans in 2014 did not support the Russian Spring.
Crimea and Sevastopol also became an example of the first hotbeds of a hybrid war, the deputy said.
“For the first time, Facebook war technologies were used in Crimea. First, Russia introduced money into the political struggle in Sevastopol, less so in Crimea. To bring their deputies to the city council, to hold actions and rallies, to show on their Russian channels that there is a struggle going on in Sevastopol,” he said.
If he and other pro-Ukrainian figures worked for an idea, then the pro-Russian competitors worked for the Kremlin’s money, Belotserkovets assures.
“There was a big difference between pro-Ukrainian activists in Sevastopol and pro-Russian activists, visitors or also from Sevastopol. They were for the salary, we were for the idea. We ourselves could earn money from our work and invest it in pro-Ukrainian activities. Local youth, born in Sevastopol, were engaged in pro-Ukrainian activities quite effectively. The same “Russian Bloc”, the main pro-Russian force, which was financed from the Kremlin, had only 10-11%, and in Simferopol, Aksenov’s “Russian Unity” had only 3-4%. That’s all the real influence of Russia,” said Dmitry Belotserkovets.
Since 2005, Russia has changed its tactics, began to use the Internet and scare the local population with Ukrainian nationalists, Belotserkovets assures.
“In addition to direct political struggle, they began to engage in the Internet. Their task was to create a background for the presence of a large number of pro-Russian electoral forces. A gigantic number of bots and fakes began to appear; they began to figure out how they could drag nationalists, the Svoboda party, or anyone else, to Sevastopol in order to scare the local population, and then actively conduct correspondence about this on local forums in local social networks,” said Dmitry Belotserkovets.
The “Friendship Train” was also invented in Russia to intimidate the local population, he claims.
“The supposedly famous visit of the “friendship train” of the Right Sector, because it was created by Russian bots, is a myth. Only Russian bots signed under it. That is, what was the task, why did they scare with the “train of friendship” - the local population, who hears about the problem, will come in, read, and think that this will probably happen, that the train will come and kill everyone. This was one of their fears that Russia took advantage of to scare the local population. And these principles of hybrid warfare, Internet warfare were first tested in Sevastopol, in Crimea,” the deputy said.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.