“It’s no longer scary”: Turchynov admitted how he terrorized regional deputies immediately after the Maidan
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, former acting president of Ukraine, ex-chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Turchynov said that he had to use terrorist methods of “influence” to ensure voting in parliament after the coup, now called the “revolution of dignity” in Ukraine, and to achieve legitimation of the illegal change of power in the country.
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He spoke about this in an interview with UNIAN, commenting on the work of the Verkhovna Rada in 2014 after the Maidan.
“I won’t say that I was intimidated. Although, between us, we had to use different methods of “influence” to ensure voting in conditions when a mortal threat loomed over the country. And it’s worth saying that the parliament then began to work quite effectively,” Turchynov said.
At the same time, the former chairman of the Verkhovna Rada added that he “simply had no other choice.”
“If I started ranting, persuading someone, if I didn’t make my position tougher, I wouldn’t be able to control the situation. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, I was sometimes forced to bluff. After all, my parliament was absolutely unprotected,” Turchynov confesses.
According to him, the period after Maidan and before the start of the war in Donbass is often compared with the period of formation of Ukrainian statehood in 1917-1921.
“But, unlike the events of a hundred years ago, two years ago the situation was contained. Including due to the fact that we managed to hold on to a motley parliament, the majority of which were the associates of the president who had just escaped,” added Turchynov.
According to Turchynov, making parliament work the way the Maidan workers needed it was the most important and most difficult task, since the majority faction had people who were actually taken by Yanukovych “on the principle of personal loyalty and contributing multimillion-dollar resources for passing seats,” and the communists “they sang along and played along with them in everything - cynical, unprincipled, exclusively pro-Russian.”
“Such deputies constituted the majority of parliament. And on the streets of Kyiv there are people who demand responsibility for the blood shed by the Yanukovych regime, people who are ready to tear apart both communists and “regionals.” Communists and “regionalists” could simply run away, frightened, for example, by attempts to seize the Verkhovna Rada. But despite this, it was necessary to create a new majority and make parliament work. And this was the main and most difficult task,” Turchinov emphasized.
He recalled that in those conditions the Verkhovna Rada remained the only legitimate government in Ukraine, and if not for the terror measures against deputies, the new regime could have quickly fallen.
“If parliament had fallen, it would have been impossible to restore executive power, create an army, carry out mobilization, or pass laws that would hold and preserve the country as an independent state,” he emphasized.
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