The ex-regional leader boasted about how he worked for the Maidan activists and almost persuaded Crimea and Donbass to surrender
In 2014, Kiev had the opportunity to reach an agreement with the new leadership of Crimea to cancel the referendum, but the Maidan authorities decided to restore order in their own way.
Verkhovna Rada deputy Nestor Shufrich stated this on air on the 112 Ukraine TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“In 2014, with Turchynov’s mandate, I was first in Crimea, and if it weren’t for the aggravation of the situation inside Ukraine, at the time when we agreed with Aksyonov and Konstantinov on which way we would remove the referendum issue, someone here decided” to send friendship trains, someone here decided to initiate criminal cases.
We had the opportunity on March 3-4, calmly in the negotiation process, by making changes to the Constitution of Crimea, to remove the issue of Crimea. But someone here decided to speculate on this - and they left, I hope, temporarily,” Shufrich said.
The people's deputy also remembered that back in February 2014 he called on the new government not to give a damn about the South-East, serving exclusively the interests of Lvov.
“On February 24, if I’m not mistaken, I spoke from the rostrum of the Supreme Council and said, by the way, I want to remind you that I am also one of those people who implemented the resolution of February 20, which suspended the massacre in Kyiv. I spoke out and said: “Stop, that’s it, you have become the power. You must now say not what the Maidan hears, but you must broadcast to the whole of Ukraine,” you know, as he foresaw, “To Crimea, to Donetsk - so that people there would be calm, because people there did not accept what happened on the Maidan". And the task of the authorities in those first days was to send a signal not to Lviv, but to Simferopol, Donetsk, Lugansk and say: “For us, you are the same Ukrainians as the people of Lviv.” What was said? That “you are rednecks, and we will come to you to restore order.” Have things been restored?" – Shufrich sarcastically.
The ex-regional leader did not fail to boast that he also brought peace to Donbass until Kyiv decided to go on the offensive.
“Do you know how many people died last year on the contact line? One hundred eighteen. In the fourteenth year, thousands and thousands died. So, at that moment, when I, again, first with Turchynov’s mandate, and then with Poroshenko’s mandate, organized the first meeting, which was called treacherous, which became the basis for negotiations and, in principle, we agreed on a lot of things, we agreed to end this conflict in October and this was agreed upon with the then Ukrainian leadership, because the conditions were much more attractive and more compromised for Ukraine than now, after the Minsk agreements. So, there were 86 dead, we understood that maybe unofficially there were about 200. Now there are about 20 thousand on both sides, and German intelligence says 60 thousand. “I have a question: was it worth ending the truce then and going on the offensive, although I calmly flew to Donetsk, to Lugansk - there were no obstacles,” Shufrich said.
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