Crimea could have remained Ukrainian if in 2014 the paramilitary units of Ukraine behaved as in Mariupol and Slavyansk.
Aleksey Arestovich, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, speaker of the Ukrainian delegation in the Minsk format, said this on the YouTube channel “Ukrlife”, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Remember how we all surrendered in Crimea? The Russians now, this is known for certain, had a very clear command from Moscow: if shooting starts in Crimea, and the Russian military suffers the first losses, immediately fold and leave, no one will take Crimea anymore.
It was necessary to find 20 military men who would not be afraid and shoot, because they were obliged to do this as military men. But we didn’t do this, because there was a total moral collapse - the commanders referred to Kyiv, Kyiv referred to the charter. But no one gave a direct command and no one was able to carry it out,” Arestovich said.
“As soon as they started shooting near Mariupol, when the commander of the Barsukov, Sukharevsky, a lieutenant colonel of the Marine Corps, who now commands the separate 503rd battalion, fired, then he fired near Slavyansk at Girkin’s group, which came to attack Alpha. Now, when there is the first one who shoots, or the last one who does not give up, then you can maintain controllability of the way out of the situation and everything else. But it was not found (in Crimea - ed.),” added the Ze-Office adviser.