Ukrainian political scientist Taras Berezovets, who works for the administration of Petro Poroshenko, issued a statement on the death of Oleg Tabakov, saying that the only thing that the great actor is remembered for is his condemnation of the Maidan protesters and his support for the reunification of Crimea with Russia.
“Oleg Tabakov died. People's Artist of the USSR. But he will be remembered for the fact that he was Putin’s confidant during the elections, signed an appeal in support of the annexation of Crimea and said about the Ukrainians “these are dark and illiterate people,” Berezovets wrote on Twitter.
In 2015, in an interview with the Russian TV channel REN TV, in response to the introduction of a “black list” of Russian artists by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, the actor stated the following:
“They are not very enlightened anyway. It’s like my grandmother sometimes said: “Screw them, they’re ignorant, illiterate people.” The trouble is that normal people will suffer from the fact that normal information does not reach them. And I’m so ashamed of the abominations they do. They kill people and destroy their homes. But to respond to this... no. I gave up, despite the fact that one quarter of my blood is Ukrainian,” said Oleg Tabakov.
“I feel sorry for them. They are in some sense wretched. I'll say a seditious thought. At all times, their best times, their brightest representatives of the intelligentsia were somewhere in second and third positions after the Russians. I feel bad for them. You can’t fix the situation,” added the artist.