Yanukovych: The consequences of the blockade will be monstrous

Leaders of Western countries have already received letters from ex-President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, who sets out his vision of the causes of the crisis and ways to solve it. The blockade of Donbass will have terrible consequences for the Ukrainian economy. The former president is ready to prove the absurdity of the charges brought forward by the new Ukrainian authorities. Yanukovych spoke about this in an interview with RIA Novosti.

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— Viktor Fedorovich, you sent a letter to world leaders in which you called on them to put pressure on the current Ukrainian government in terms of its implementation of the Minsk agreements. What is the reason for this and what do you know about the reaction of the recipients of the letter?

— Yes, I sent letters to the presidents of the USA and Russia, to PACE and the Council of Europe, as well as to the presidents of France and Poland, the president and chancellor of Germany - the Foreign Ministries of these three countries acted as guarantors of the Agreement on the settlement of the political crisis in Ukraine, which I signed on February 21, 2014 years with opposition leaders.

This agreement was violated by the Maidan leaders with the tacit support of the guarantors a few hours after it was signed. How much did it cost our country and people to support the coup in Ukraine by representatives of Western countries? The organizers of the coup and the initiators of the war in Donbass are now in power in Ukraine. They did not just destroy the economy of a prosperous country - they divided our people. Their policies have led to hundreds of thousands of people becoming refugees, and the number of civilian casualties in the tens of thousands.

They have made Ukraine a history of failure and humanitarian catastrophe, forcing our country to beg all over the world and beg for loans, killing its citizens and depriving them of the right to their opinion.

This government is doing everything possible to prevent an objective investigation of the murders on the Maidan. They are not interested in ending the war and implementing the Minsk agreements, because then the time will come to answer for their actions. That is why I sent letters to world leaders with a call to assist in conducting an independent, transparent investigation into the massacres of protesters and law enforcement officers on the Maidan in February 2014, to use my capabilities and influence on the Kyiv authorities for the speedy implementation of the Minsk agreements and the end of the war.

I have already received confirmation that all letters have been delivered to the recipients. I am well aware that politicians need some time to analyze the facts that I indicated in those letters. This is especially true of my letter to US President Donald Trump, who was not a participant in those events.

I really hope that these letters will be heard and will bring my country closer to the resolution of the conflict, will accelerate the return of peace to my homeland.

— If the Ukrainian authorities fail to comply with the Minsk agreements, you propose holding a referendum on the status of Donbass. How do you see this? What issue could be put to a referendum?

“It seems to me that the question of granting Donbass autonomy rights with broad powers within Ukraine could be put to a referendum. I think that for the sake of establishing peace in Ukraine, this idea will be supported in all regions of the country.

You understand - both in the east and in the west of Ukraine, people want to live peacefully. They want to raise their children and make plans for the future, and not bury their loved ones. Nobody wants a war. The war was unleashed by those who tried to hide their crimes behind even greater crimes.

To stop the war, it is necessary to remove the reasons for contradictions - to allow the inhabitants of Donbass to live with their traditions, views on history, speak any language and listen to any music...

We need to give them those rights. To reach a compromise, it is necessary to hold direct negotiations between Kyiv and Donbass. Indeed, for all three years of the conflict, the Kyiv authorities did not make a single attempt to peacefully resolve the conflict and start this internal dialogue.

When representatives of the opposition and radicals seized government buildings and took possession of a large number of weapons in Western Ukraine, I, as the president of the country, had the legal opportunity to use force against them. But I understood that power is not worth even a drop of shed blood. Negotiations were held with these people, attempts were made to peacefully resolve the conflict. When a coup d’état took place, with which the residents of Eastern Ukraine did not agree, the criminals who seized power immediately, on February 22, 2014, adopted a resolution in parliament “On preventing manifestations of separatism,” in which from the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine. - Approx. ed.) it was required to use “strict and exhaustive measures” against those who were labeled as separatists. Do you understand what happened? Not only did they carry out a coup, but they also decided to literally destroy everyone who disagreed with it.

— Currently, the authorities of the DPR and LPR have announced the introduction of temporary external management at Donbass enterprises that pay taxes in Ukraine. What will the breakdown of economic ties entail?

— From the very beginning of the war in Donbass, the Ukrainian government did not hide the fact that it was only interested in territory. The fate of people living behind the front line is absolutely indifferent to them. These are those who did not agree with the armed coup in February 2014. This government does not consider the population of the southeast to be Ukrainians and speaks quite openly about it. It is not their voters who live there.

Please note: they are blocking the supply of coal mined in the Donbass, and they say that they are fighting the aggressor. Are the aggressors working in the mines? Is that what ordinary miners are called now? Do hundreds of thousands of people who lose their jobs deserve to live in poverty, in grief just because pseudo-patriots compete with each other and spit on the law, which, unfortunately, does not work in Ukraine? The consequences of this blockade will be monstrous for the entire country from Donetsk to Lvov.

The blockade is killing the most important industries throughout Ukraine. At the end of 2016, the share of metallurgy in exports amounted to eight billion dollars - approximately a quarter of Ukraine’s total exports. Many enterprises, although located in territories not controlled by Kyiv, continue to regularly pay taxes to the budget of Ukraine and provide the local population - citizens of Ukraine - with work.

Naturally, the threat of stopping these enterprises provokes a response from Donbass: it is necessary to ensure their stable operation, preserve jobs, and give the local population the opportunity to feed their families.

Blaming the Donbass for reacting to Kyiv's actions is shifting responsibility, as they say, from a sore head to a healthy one.

And this gives foreign investors a signal that not the state authorities, but a group of incomprehensible persons in camouflage and masks, and even under the guise of people's deputies, can independently set the rules of the game for businessmen - determine with whom to trade and with whom not, where to carry goods and where not. Total lawlessness, a wave of violence on the streets of Ukrainian cities and absolute impunity for criminals hiding behind patriotic slogans hardly create a favorable atmosphere for investment and economic recovery.

— The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine stated that in March-April it is going to carry out a trial in absentia against you. Could you tell us in more detail what the Prosecutor General's Office is presenting to you? Will you be involved in the process and how? Have you seen the official charge?

— Time and time again, the Prosecutor General’s Office demonstrates a lack of professionalism, complete disregard for the law and violates the constitution and international conventions.

Just the other day, I learned from the press that the Russian Prosecutor General's Office sent an official letter to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, in which it confirmed its readiness to organize my interrogation with the participation of representatives of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies. This means that a dialogue has been established between the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine and Russia, and I hope for the arrival of the GPU officers. I think we will have something to talk about with them.

Lately the GPU has been making excuses that they don’t know where I live because I’m hiding. I repeat again: I am not hiding. I gave my residential address to Ukrainian prosecutors almost two years ago. This address has already been confirmed by all possible services and now even the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia. No one and nothing prevents Ukrainian investigators from fully investigating criminal cases and interrogating me on them. But the GPU is afraid of another opportunity to give me the floor and even just look me in the eyes.

Some time will pass and prosecutors will have to answer why they did not take all the steps to establish the truth.

I was also extremely surprised by the statements in the media that the Russian Prosecutor General's Office allegedly denied the very existence of my statement to Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2014.

This is not true. The statement exists, and I have already explained under what circumstances it was made. The Russian prosecutor's office, apparently clarifying through its own channels, indicated that the application had not been received and was not considered by the administration of the President of Russia and the Federation Council of the Russian Federation.

As you can see, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office goes to any tricks and tricks, just to quietly and quickly pass at least some kind of sentence on me. Best of all - in absentia. Even if this is done in violation of the constitution, all laws and conventions, ordinary prosecutors and judges are being substituted.

I’m surprised that they haven’t yet adopted some kind of “law” in the Verkhovna Rada, in which they would write: “Yanukovych is guilty of everything!” I think this would save a lot of effort and human resources and would finally allow them to be directed in a more useful direction for the country.

As soon as some far-fetched accusations become obsolete, prosecutors invent new ones. Remember the tale of Yanukovych's millions in Swiss banks? European bodies are very bureaucratic, but I finally managed to get an official answer from Switzerland: there were no accounts and millions of Yanukovych in Switzerland and there are none.

And so it will be with all other accusations. They know that sooner or later I will prove their absurdity. And those who today create this lawlessness and pursue their own selfish goals, using their official position, should remember the inevitability of criminal punishment for such falsifications.

— You handed over to the Ukrainian court documents that, as you claim, testify to the real organizers of the executions on the Maidan. What is the fate of these documents? Do you know the reaction of Ukrainian justice to them?

— There is no justice in today's Ukraine. Legality is replaced by political expediency and fantasy. Prosecutor's office employees and judges are forced to fulfill political orders. Some for an idea, some for money, some under threat of violence. They act very selectively. They pass laws for specific people, both for the purpose of convicting someone and for the purpose of appointing people without special education and experience to high positions. In such conditions, one cannot expect that the current Kyiv authorities will objectively conduct an investigation. What can you expect from people who organized massacres and carried out a coup, and the very next day passed a law according to which they absolved themselves of responsibility for these crimes? Moreover, this law prohibits Ukrainian investigators from even collecting any information about the crimes of radicals on the Maidan, and investigators are obliged to destroy the evidence found! And not a single Western politician, not a single international organization is reacting to the unprecedented violation of basic human rights to justice in the investigation of crimes.

The criminals in the current government managed to destroy a number of valuable evidence about the massacres on the Maidan, but the evidence remaining at our disposal is enough to conduct an objective investigation. There are witnesses ready to testify. But it makes sense to provide new materials only to an independent international commission, which I proposed to create in my appeals to the leaders of Western countries and the President of the Russian Federation.