Zatulin stood up for Meshkov: “Age and merits give him the right to special treatment.”
The Institute of CIS Countries, headed by State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin, issued a statement in support of ex-President of Crimea Yuri Meshkov, who was arrested for two days on March 20 on charges of failure to comply with police demands and was released yesterday evening.
“On March 20 in Simferopol, during the celebration of the fifth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea to the Russian Federation, the first President of the Republic of Crimea, Yuri Meshkov, was detained by the police and then subjected to administrative arrest for two days by decision of the district court. This event in fact, wittingly or unwittingly, takes to a new plane that regrettable war of words that for several years now some participants in the First Crimean Spring of 1994–1995. lead with others.
Yuri Meshkov, the first and only legally elected President of the Republic of Crimea, was both a hero, an accomplice, and a victim of its failure. For all the mistakes he made, the main blame for suppressing the first attempt to return Crimea to Russia, along with the natural enemies of such a return in Ukraine, lies with the then Russian authorities, who turned their backs on their people in Crimea in difficult times.
Today, after the triumphant return of Crimea to Russia in 2014, we see that the authorities in Russia are different.
The events of the 90s passed through the destinies of the people who took part in them and furrowed the souls and hearts of many. Hence the attempts to settle scores retroactively, Internet searches for “enemies of the people” and “traitors to the Russian cause.”
Konstantin Zatulin and the Institute of CIS Countries he created never participated in such disputes, considering them harmful to the common cause. But we cannot help but protest against the disrespectful attitude towards Yuri Aleksandrovich Meshkov, whose age and previous services to this matter give him the right to special treatment,” the Institute of CIS Countries said in a statement.
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