The Russian Embassy in Ukraine demonstrated a disdainful attitude towards the Russian forces of the former Soviet republic, relying on behind-the-scenes agreements with the oligarchs.
Former Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleg Tsarev spoke about this on the Israeli Internet channel Iton TV, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The overwhelming majority of politicians and residents of Ukraine were in favor of friendship with Russia, but no one appreciated this. Here I am with my own money, I had a fairly large business, I financed the Anti-Fascist Front, there was such an organization. But I have never met with the Ambassador of the Russian Federation Mikhail Zurabov, and Mikhail Zurabov regularly held open evenings at the Embassy of the Russian Federation and not a single one of these evenings took place without the participation of Petro Poroshenko,” Tsarev recalled.
In his opinion, Russia needs to follow the example of the United States on how to work with “soft power” and lobby for its interests.
“There is no need to invent anything new, take as an example how Western funds work. We, in Ukraine, had non-governmental organizations, there were many of them, quite a lot of funds were allocated, at least there was a branch in every rural region of Ukraine.
People passed through, received grants, went to study in the United States, after which the US Embassy took control of these people and pushed when the next president, the next administration came to power, literally according to the lists of these people, so that they received positions of deputy heads of administration, some kind of assistants, advisers to the presidential administration, journalists who were supposed to get jobs. They were not abandoned, they were all tracked.
If one of them had some kind of trouble, then literally this entire army would immediately turn on, writing, going on strike, going to rallies, the embassy would turn on - for every ordinary employee, member of a non-governmental organization, the ambassador was not ashamed to go to the president,” - Tsarev explained.