In Kyiv, Sevastopol "Berkut" refused to remove the St. George ribbons at the request of the SBU
During the Maidan in 2014, fighters of the Sevastopol “Berkut” tied St. George ribbons to themselves to identify each other among other security forces. Even then, this aroused the indignation of the SBU officers and representatives of the presidential administration, who demanded to “stop the Moscow provocation.”
This was stated in an interview with the First Sevastopol TV channel by one of the Berkut fighters, who gave an interview with his face covered with a balaclava.
“Since there are many employees and some departments perform their functions, we needed to come up with some distinctive marks for the uniform. I ran to the Central Market, ran into a military store and bought it - nothing came to mind then, I bought 10 meters, there was no more money, a St. George ribbon.
They distributed it to the kids, cut it into small pieces, put it on their equipment, and when we arrived in Kyiv, we were immediately assigned to the president’s office, and we went on buses. When they came out, it caused a fuss even among other employees, in other areas. The curators of the SBU and the presidential guard came up to us and said: “Why are you wearing this, these are the symbols of Moscow. This is some kind of provocation.”
We say: “This is, in fact, our traditional symbol, we wear it not only on May 9.” Plus, we wanted to demonstratively show the people who tore off the ribbons from the veterans, the order, that we are not going to indulge their ideas and we have our own idea. We didn’t remove it, although there were many problems on the part of the leadership, the SBU, and the president’s security. This was considered a provocation,” the special forces soldier said.
Previously, ex-commander of the Sevastopol "Berkut" Sergey Kolbin saidthat in 2014, the Berkut units located on the Maidan could easily cope with the dispersal of protesters and stop the coup.
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