“Putin, coming out after a long conversation with Yanukovych, said: “This is a traitor.”
Behind-the-scenes details previously unknown to the general public - why Russia supported Viktor Yanukovych even when Vladimir Putin called him a “traitor”, in an interview with a columnist “PolitNavigator” to Valentin Filippov said the director of the Institute of CIS Countries Konstantin Zatulin.
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Valentin Filippov: Hello, Konstantin Fedorovich!
Konstantin Zatulin: Hello.
Valentin Filippov: Konstantin Fedorovich, tell me, a year and a half ago, even a little more, when it all began in Crimea, did you assume that it would all end in Crimea, and that the Russian Spring would not go further? To the borders of Transnistria, for example...
Konstantin Zatulin: Do you think that this started a year and a half ago? In Crimea?
Valentin Filippov: I believe it started about 25 years ago. But….
Konstantin Zatulin: Well, since you and I agree that this did not start a year and a half ago, I have personally been involved in this, one way or another, since 1994, almost twenty years.
For me, of course, there was no doubt that the decision of the Crimeans to reunite with Russia would have inevitable consequences for our relations with other countries, and, above all, for relations with Ukraine, and for the situation in Ukraine itself. This decision was made in an environment of temporary pressure, when decisions had to be made very quickly, when we were faced with a challenge called the “coup in Kyiv.”
When it was obvious that any hopes, if anyone had them, I did not have them by that moment, any hopes that Yanukovych and the Party of Regions would be able to resist were destroyed.
The option that was chosen as a result, of course, does honor to Russia, its president and the people who support him, and this is the majority of the Russian population. For they, one might say, freed one and a half million of their compatriots from the spell. Without taking into account the inevitable consequences of this step, which we feel today.
Valentin Filippov: Well, do you think that the consequences would be greater if, for example, Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson were lucky...
Konstantin Zatulin: I think the consequences would be less. And in this I do not agree with everything, and I do not agree with the way the development of events took place.
I always believed that the voice of Crimea should be heard; I knew that Crimea and Sevastopol were hostages of Russian-Ukrainian relations. And, generally speaking, there was no such question, if Russia were ready to accept Crimea, was ready to agree to the Crimean expression of will, would support this expression of will, in principle, there was no question of the sympathies of Crimea and its choice, I, for example, had no doubt about this.
The task that was set, which was not fully completed, and there are certain reasons for this in Ukraine and Russia, was to make sure that Crimea was not alone in its choice. Well, it seems that Donetsk and Lugansk demonstrated this. But it was not only about Donetsk and Lugansk.
Valentin Filippov: I'm hinting at this, yes.
Konstantin Zatulin: And about all of Eastern Ukraine. And I, for one, insist on that. Back in 2008, 2009, when I came to the internal absolute understanding that the Party of Regions, without pressure on it from the Eastern Ukrainian electorate, without this pressure being institutionalized and formalized in the form of a popular front of the South and East of Ukraine... This is a note I wrote in the spring of 2009. On the need to create a Popular Front of the South and East of Ukraine.
But the Party of Regions by itself, due to the characteristics of its party body, its party history, will not be able to express the will of the East of Ukraine. Our idea was that it was necessary to encourage the most active element of the Party of Regions and other pro-Russian movements, which occupied a certain electoral niche, but were very weak, and which, in fact, the Party of Regions destroyed.
Valentin Filippov: Yes, regularly.
Konstantin Zatulin: So that a competitor does not appear on this flank. She believed, Yanukovych believed that the pro-Russian vector is what should be in his pocket. And what is his non-changeable capital. In general, this is how it turned out, in essence. This played a role in the fact that Yanukovych, after all, escaped. In the end, he didn’t run away somewhere, but to Russia.
Valentin Filippov: Somehow they treated him very hospitably, it seems...
Konstantin Zatulin: Well, they couldn’t do it any other way, that’s also understandable.
Valentin Filippov: But, Konstantin Fedorovich, it was possible to at least put pressure on him somehow. So that he, while in exile, wrote several important decrees.
Konstantin Zatulin: No, well, he wrote something. And I did some performances.
Valentin Filippov: Well, he made such speeches, obviously not as a president. If he came out and said: “I am issuing a decree prohibiting the army from leaving the barracks.” At least that way.
Konstantin Zatulin: No, listen. The fact is that by the time he ended up in Russia, he was completely and utterly compromised. And our cooperation with him, in this case, was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we received some kind of ephemeral legitimacy if these decrees were issued. And on the other hand, they compromised themselves and the entire Russian World and the pro-Russian factor by continuing to collaborate with a coward, a thief and a weakling, in fact, despite this gigantic growth and loud speeches.
Valentin Filippov: Well, when he fell in Ivano-Frankivsk in 2004, when an egg hit him, in my opinion, his personal qualities became clear.
I almost had a heart break.
Konstantin Zatulin: I want to tell you that this may be so, but what is the story in all this Ukrainian tragicomedy... Now it has turned into a tragedy, but it was a tragicomedy... It lies in the fact that it is difficult to change horses at the crossing. When he lost in 2004-2005, it was not yet entirely clear whether it was his fault, or whether it was, in fact, largely due to his friend Leonid Kuchma, who, with his two-faced behavior at that moment, actually created the conditions for victory.” orange revolution." At that time, there was a “liberation movement” within the Party of Regions itself. They wanted to get rid of Yanukovych, but I, for example, assessed the motives for which they wanted to get rid of him very negatively. It was a desire to get rid of the “downed pilot” who prevents fraternization with the winners.
Valentin Filippov: Oh, just like that...
Konstantin Zatulin: Well, this is the party of the bosses. This is a party of big capital.
Valentin Filippov: This is a batch of parasites.
Konstantin Zatulin: Yes. This is a party that wanted to find its place. She didn't want to be a party. She wanted to be the group in power. It was not a party in the strict sense of the word. We helped make a party out of it. In 2005, when she was forced to endure all the persecution. And we did not allow these repressions to happen. Because it makes no sense to carry out repressions in Ukraine in conditions of an open border and a negative attitude in Russia towards the fact of these repressions. After all, many people who later appeared, both before and after, were heard on the Ukrainian political scene, they took refuge, thanks to our assistance, in Russian sanatoriums, hospitals and clinics.
Valentin Filippov: Yes Yes Yes. Our Odessa mayor left for St. Petersburg. He was the deputy director of the Leningrad port. Ruslan Bodelan. By the way, he's a good guy. In fact.
Konstantin Zatulin: No, Bodelan left... For example, at Klyuev’s request, I hosted the now deceased deputy Chechetov in a hospital near Moscow. And he spent two months there, at that time they were actively looking for him in Ukraine, he was also the former head of state property of Ukraine. The orange government tried to tie him to Yanukovych with all its might. In general, they were of this kind... In 2005, we demonstratively signed a protocol between United Russia and the Party of Regions.
Valentin Filippov: I remember. And you simply pushed us all to vote for the Party of Regions.
Konstantin Zatulin: We had no other choice. The fact is that at that moment it turned out to be impossible to reformat the Party of Regions under such pressure. It turned out to be impossible to change the face of this party. Yanukovych, he, as it were, entered the consciousness of voters in Ukraine as a person who fought against Yushchenko. And it was important for us to prove that Yushchenko is the wrong result of political evolution in Ukraine.
Valentin Filippov: He is indeed wrong.
Konstantin Zatulin: Yes. And for what he did, for unleashing these Russophobic forces in Ukraine, he must suffer political punishment. And I personally remember 2005 and 2006 as years of active cooperation with Viktor Yanukovych and attempts to help him. In 2006, all this taken together, along with the efforts, first of all, of the Party of Regions itself, uniting around the dissatisfied and oligarchs, voters and the pro-Russian electorate, all this led to the return of the Party of Regions. Note that the Party of Regions and Yanukovych personally have committed over ten years.... They set such a record. They returned to power twice.
The power of the pro-Russian factor, in 2006 this happened for the first time during the elections in March...
Valentin Filippov: OK then. The Party of Regions is either good or nothing. I've been thinking so for a long time. And where they have now fled, to which parties, characterizes them in a certain way.
Konstantin Zatulin: I wanted to say one last thing. Throwing away this whole story. I want that there is no need to paint everyone with the same paint, one must understand that these trials in which the party was immersed, which did not want to be a party, and did not want to be a party, but was forced to become one, they led to the cult of the leader, discipline, verticals. They silenced any discussion in this party with internal party discipline. All people who were at all dissident were removed from the leadership, and the cult of Yanukovych reigned, who alone knows what is needed. Despite the fact that Yanukovych himself, as you know, did not have enough stars in the sky. And at the same time, he proceeded from his primitive idea of what is good and what is bad. As a result, he brought everything to the Vilnius Summit, and at the very last moment, in the most clumsy way, he himself turned away from the course along which he had been leading Ukraine into the European Union for a year and a half.
Valentin Filippov: By the way, I absolutely do not understand why he led Ukraine into the European Union. How did this happen, how they overlooked the fact that he was leading her there. And I, being inside, in Ukraine, felt this pressure, the growing propaganda of the European Union and then attempts to ban advertising of the Customs Union. Sometimes there, “Ukrainian Choice”, while drinking money, sometimes they still put up some kind of billboards. "We are for the Customs Union." So they almost tried to open criminal cases there for distributing such advertising.
Konstantin Zatulin: I can explain it to you. The fact is that Viktor Yanukovych, of course, was not a fully adequate person. He achieved his goal, it should be noted, by becoming the President of Ukraine in 2010. He decided that he should thank Russia a little, as they say, with the Kharkov agreements. And this is all he is obliged to do in relation to Russia. Of course, by this time he was already tied with many threads, primarily financial threads, with the West. He, of course, as a person for whom the “golden calf” is... or the “golden loaf” is a sacred symbol, he understood that the West is Mecca for any oligarch, he is obliged to worship it, and he very naively assumed that he would succeed , averting his eyes to Russia, as his predecessor Kuchma did,
Valentin Filippov: Well, times were different.
Konstantin Zatulin: He, hating Kuchma, I know that he hated Kuchma, he is a very vindictive person, he absolutely did not remember goodness, and did not consider it necessary to pay the debts of friendship, but he was very vindictive. Kuchma, who made him prime minister and nominated him as a presidential candidate, but allowed cunning in relation to him, in fact, played with him, wanted to lead Ukraine to such a position in 2004, when Yushchenko and Yanukovych balanced each other and would have to look for solutions from Kuchma. But Kuchma outplayed himself, Yanukovych harbored a grudge against him and during his presidency tried to somehow persecute Kuchma. Already being the President of Ukraine. But at the same time, as often happens, he pursued Kuchma’s policy. That is, this two-faced policy between East and West. This was his ideal. He believed that, within the limits of what was permitted, he was heading towards the European Union. For association with Europe.
Valentin Filippov: Not deep : )
Konstantin Zatulin: Yes. Which means, on the one hand, in matters of defense and security, he did what was expected of him, legalizing the presence of the Black Sea Fleet and removing the course toward NATO from Ukraine’s documents. He did it. On the other hand, he is developing his ties with the West because it is profitable.
But the word “profitable” played the most important role in his eyes.
Valentin Filippov: Well, yes…. Who “benefits”? To him personally?
Konstantin Zatulin: It's profitable to make money from this. It must be said that, of course, he was scammed. Well, let’s say we first encountered this in 2006, when it turned out that his election campaign was being run by Manafort, who was sent to him by his friend Rinat Akhmetov for free. The word “free” also played a big role. Rinat Akhmetov paid $18 million for the election campaign, for the services of Manafort, who told Yanukovych that she has a “secret passage” to the White House, and she is always against the backdrop of Yushchenko, who is pro-American, and can organize shadow contact with the Americans so that they see Yanukovych is a good guy. He wanted everyone to feel good. He wanted both with the West and with Russia.
This is such a peasant trick. Which is all visible outside.
Therefore, I return to the original question, it became clear to me that without putting pressure on him, in 2009, we could no longer nominate another candidate, or support him with a chance of success, including due to the rigidity of our internal decision making in Russia. Because of our bureaucratic decision-making. Due to the fact that we can easily sponsor the whole of Ukraine with bargain-basement gas prices, and no one will say a word, but in order to spend adequate American five billion dollars to buy media, television channels, sponsor pro-Russian political strength, this is an impossible task for us.
Valentin Filippov: No, well, you can pay with gas.
Konstantin Zatulin: Yes, understand! Spend billions on everyone - please! But give five kopecks and what if they steal it!
Valentin Filippov: No, well, you and I once talked about this topic. A few years ago. I said: “Give a million to each deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, there are 450 of them in total, and all your issues will be resolved.”
Konstantin Zatulin: You know, in all cases when something similar arose, the Party of Regions always said, “we decide everything. We resolve these issues ourselves!” We were told that they were deciding everything. They decided, I know people in the Party of Regions, who, when they needed it, they knew exactly how many dollars would fit in a suitcase of a certain size, because the suitcases were brought to the Verkhovna Rada and distributed.
Valentin Filippov: Well, such data, how many dollars each suitcase fits, is known in any city hall in Ukraine. Especially near the Black Sea.
Konstantin Zatulin: So, in 2009 we had a chance. Unfortunately, the people who were involved in politics in Ukraine here, at the highest level, delayed. They made a mistake. In order to create such a Popular Front so that the Party of Regions would not declare war on it from the threshold and crush it, it was necessary to legalize the participation of pro-Russian activists of the Party of Regions itself in this movement. To do this, it was necessary for one person, his last name to be known, to put his hand on Viktor Fedorovich Yanukovych’s shoulder and say: “Viktor Fedorovich, we want to help you. We want to help you, since some of the voters have left you as a result of various events, let’s create a movement on a non-partisan basis that will help you win in 2010.” That was the idea. But this conversation was needed.
And when it came to the point that this conversation was needed, the people in charge were afraid to go to this high-ranking person in Russia, and decided that it was necessary to carry out all this without... without interfering in it...
Valentin Filippov: Without touching the authorities.
Konstantin Zatulin: As soon as, immediately after these actions began, Viktor Yanukovych found out that they were trying to somehow collectivize his people into some kind of movement, he immediately threw a terrible hysteria. “You want to pull the chair out from under me! You are starting something against me!” And so on.
And these same functionaries here, holding their tails, gave the all clear.
But in 2010 it was too late to do this - because it was impossible. He became the president. It was no longer possible to ask...
Valentin Filippov: Pat on the shoulder.
Konstantin Zatulin: Yes. Here, you see, is the story. Therefore, I actually had no illusions. Now it’s fashionable to say what fools we were, how mistaken we were all…. I know that when in April 2010, after the Kharkov agreements, even in May, Putin met with Yanukovych, discussing economic problems with him, came to Kiev, coming out after a long conversation with Yanukovych, he said: “This is a traitor”... .
I know he said it.
He understood this perfectly.
He understood the character of this man. Yanukovych was no enigma for Putin. But what was to be done?
It was a partner.
It was the President of Ukraine.
Valentin Filippov: Oh, I don’t like it when they say “partner”…. At first they say to a traitor - “he is a partner.”
Then they start calling the alcoholic fascist a “partner.”
This is somehow strange. Very strange.
Konstantin Zatulin: I'll tell you one story. True, earlier. In 2005, after we signed the protocol, Viktor Yanukovych came to Russia in August 2005. He regularly visited Russia because, as we already found out, he was a “downed pilot”, and only Russia could support him . And he was supposed to meet with one, as we found out, a very tall man. Who did not refuse him, despite his difficult situation, such receptions. And before he went to him, I met with him and tried to clarify, not just out of curiosity, but because, frankly, I was asked to do this. What exactly does he want?
And he told me the version. So he came to Russia, knowing for sure that if he returned to Ukraine, he would definitely be imprisoned. The Orange authorities have already prepared the relevant criminal cases there, and he will be “closed,” as he said. Therefore, he came to Russia in order to meet this man and ask for political asylum. He will be here in Russia preparing the “February revolution”, like Lenin in Switzerland, and then, when it comes to the 2006 elections, and when the lists of untouchability have already been registered, he will return to Ukraine. That is, he will be here, from here, from Russia, preparing a counter-orange revolution in Ukraine.
But he went to this man and met with him. He listened to him carefully and said, “You know, Viktor Fedorovich, if you have made such a decision, then we, of course, will assist you. We will provide you with shelter. And we will help you not only settle here, but we will also help you so that you do not feel abandoned, poor, and so on. We will give you the opportunity to do business. But from this moment, as soon as you make such a decision, you no longer have anything to do with Ukraine. And you will not engage in any activities from Russia to Ukraine.” Then Viktor Fedorovich thought and realized that he needed to show his best qualities, he returned to Ukraine, and a day after he met, I saw him again, and he explained to me, as if there had been no previous conversation, that he needed to work, we have to fight, we have to go, we have to create, and so on.
He got lucky. In September 2005, the orange cracked. Tymoshenko quarreled with Yushchenko, the orange color compromised itself much faster...
Valentin Filippov: Well, they couldn't help but quarrel. They were united by a thirst to break through to power. But they broke through - it was necessary to divide it somehow.
Konstantin Zatulin: Here's the story. And the story, unfortunately, is that we did not have time to provide such support, in conditions when the Party of Regions was plugging with itself, like a cork in a bottle, such support for the Russian-speaking electorate in Eastern Ukraine, which would lead to an increase in its self-awareness, cohesion, development methods of counteraction, civil activity, at least akin to that which was demonstrated in Western Ukraine.
As a result, only Donetsk and Lugansk, and with what suffering, took this road of resistance. And Odessa had a blast in the House of Trade Unions...
Valentin Filippov: Well, Odessa overstrained itself a little earlier...
Konstantin Zatulin: Even earlier, but the House of Trade Unions simply crowned...
Valentin Filippov: Well, it was a beautiful point, organized by the fascists. At that time there was no resistance as such.
Konstantin Zatulin: I think that these fascists, of course, committed not only a crime, but also stupidity. They didn’t need to bring it to this point, they didn’t need to create this image that would detonate sooner or later anyway.
Valentin Filippov: Well, I don't know, I don't know. You know, they did all this consciously. It was all managed. Governor. There….
Konstantin Zatulin: This is common redneck. The brutality of this fascist nationalist force.
Valentin Filippov: They needed to intimidate. You understand, in Odessa 80% are pro-Russian, and it was necessary to somehow intimidate them. Demonstratively present that – we will….
Konstantin Zatulin: Yes, there is such an argument. But at the next turn of history, it all comes back.
Valentin Filippov: No no no! They don’t know that History has twists and turns.
Konstantin Zatulin: Well, then I sympathize with them.
Continuation of the interview with Konstantin Zatulin - soon on PolitNavigator
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