Viktor Yanukovych gave an interview to BBC News. The first thing that surprised the public was the fact that British journalists visited the fugitive president accused of mass killings of his fellow citizens at all. In fact, why would not they talk to African cannibal chieftains after such interviews? However, the latter idea still remains controversial. Although, in the end, when has anyone put forward specific accusations against Yanukovych? Has anyone caught the Heavenly Hundred’s murderers, including those who ordered the shootings? There are just journalistic investigations and lots of speculation at the moment. Of course, let us not forget about documents missing from the Security Service of Ukraine and the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the fact that direct witnesses of those events are now either in Crimea or Russia. Let us also remember Serhii Kliuiev’s recent escape, which many analysts see as a disgrace, maintaining that the authorities allowed Kliuiev to flee.
Secondly, “even though the ostrich debate has not ended, I still suggest rethinking and recalling how did the Yanukovych regime even become possible?! I mean rethinking it as a ‘phenomenon,’ as part of the clan system. It will also illuminate our path to a catastrophic upheaval and war,” The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna posted on Facebook. Indeed, Yanukovych did not come out of the blue, but was, like a number of other figures, a product of the 12-year-long Leonid Kuchma era. It was under Kuchma that Yanukovych became the head of the Donetsk Oblast State Administration and, finally, the Prime Minister of Ukraine. Against the background of “highly efficient” Yushchenko-Tymoshenko administration, Kuchma’s best student Yanukovych was even able to get even with them and become the president in 2010. However, this led to tragedy for the entire country in four years’ time.
Professor of history Olena Stiazhkina gave the following assessment of that period in an interview with galinfo.com.ua: “I do not want to look like a fan of conspiracy theories, but as I have repeatedly expressed this opinion, I will repeat it again: Russia was preparing to support the Donbas’s separation from Ukraine for 15 years.” That is, she sets the start of the process in the immediate aftermath of the rigged presidential election of 1999 that saw Kuchma reelected.
Political analyst of the Institute for Euro-Atlantic cooperation Volodymyr Horbach believes that every statement by Yanukovych should be understood as its opposite. “If he says he did not give the order to shoot,” Horbach posted on Facebook, “it means he did give it. If he says there were no Russian security services’ operatives in Ukraine during the Euromaidan, it means there definitely were. When we hear that Putin was against his escape, we should understand it as an admission that the entire affair was Putin’s doing. In general, almost all the messages of his interview transmit the Russian stance, with regard to the Euromaidan as well as on Crimea and the Donbas.” As Dmitry Shusharin (Moscow) posted on Facebook, “I said it from the outset that Yanukovych was recalled by the Kremlin, not overthrown, perhaps even recalled against his will. I discussed this possibility even before his evacuation, after him signing that agreement with representatives of the EU, for I see it as what prompted the Kremlin to remove him lest he acquire some European legitimacy.”
“I was opposed to the bloodshed in Ukraine, and did everything in my power to prevent war in Ukraine,” Yanukovych said, despite being one to ask Putin to invade Ukraine after “doing everything in his power.”
“I do not know why the BBC went for it,” director general of Ukraine’s National Television Zurab Alasania commented for The Day. “Perhaps, they just see him as an interesting figure. They are very far removed from our reality and do not care about our situation. We are on the other side of the divide, we cannot take it, but they do not see him as an enemy. This interview did not make any sense besides filling the Ukrainian Facebook with another bunch of silly memes about ostriches, which will be discussed there for a long time. The BBC just filled their air time with it. I guess we need to do such interviews ourselves, but Ukraine is at war. It would look the same if we did an interview with some Argentine official during the Falklands War [the war between the UK and Argentina over control of the Falkland Islands. – Authors]. TV people see it just as a high-rating program, the world revolves around ratings, and it is often annoying, which I cannot help but note as a representative of a public broadcaster. However, it is the people themselves who watch these high-rating programs which are full of negative news. It seems that the British mostly do not care about what is happening in Ukraine.”
Putin said recently in a film about the annexation of Crimea, whose name is very reminiscent of a similar Nazi-sponsored film about the annexation of the Sudetes, that he had actually saved Yanukovych, and eventually admitted that the “little green men” in Crimea were Russian servicemen. Now, we see Yanukovych saying that the annexation of Crimea by Russia was a tragedy, and expressing his belief that Ukraine has no realistic chance to take back the peninsula, although the fugitive reiterated his support for the country’s integrity. Yanukovych accused the Euromaidan of inducing the Crimean population into majority support for separation from Ukraine. Yanukovych has failed, however, to relate how fear of the Euromaidan was manufactured in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, as well as name the people who invented the myths about the “Banderaites.” He has also failed to explain why he put Russians in key positions, including those in the Security Service, and describe how Ukraine was well on its way to becoming a “province” of the Russian Federation, being effectively filled with traitors in various government bodies.
We can also agree with Yanukovych that “genocide is happening in the Donbas.” However, we will be more precise, and state that it is Russian-directed genocide of Ukrainians, involving not only physical extermination, but also ethnocide, that is, eliminating the national identity of Ukrainians. The Party of Regions did a lot for this when in power. Moreover, it is the representatives of this party who now serve as officials of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LNR and DNR), which are actually terrorist organizations. “The nightmare that became reality,” which is Yanukovych’s label for the war in his native Donbas, has somehow spread only to the areas formerly under his business influence. Why has this territorial selectivity come to pass? Could it be that Yanukovych was just using “war games” to re-conquer his property past year? Let us recall that it was Yanukovych who angrily said at the time that “Ukraine will yet hear the Donbas.”
Political analyst Yevhen Mahda commented on the Yanukovych interview for The Day: “This is not an independent media episode. This message is part of the Russian Federation’s general course that seeks to impose direct negotiations with the LNR and DNR on Ukraine. Yanukovych could say anything, provided he eventually said that the government of Ukraine should sit down at the negotiating table with Luhansk and Donetsk, and state that we have lost Crimea. That is, he had to simply repeat the arguments recently put forward by Putin and Lavrov. Everything else was just trivia which do not deserve attention as a matter of principle. I do not rule out that some Western media were looking for an opportunity to interview Yanukovych. It so happened that this opportunity came to the BBC. Russia will use Yanukovych until it uses him up completely. Of course, Russia will also use the former allies of Yanukovych who have stayed in Ukraine. What is at issue here is our perception of their messages. I do not recognize that Yanukovych has any moral right to blame anyone, especially in view of the shootings during the Euromaidan. Considering his ample powers, I find it funny that he criticizes anyone.”
In general, such interviews should be considered in a wider context. Russians try to turn Yanukovych’s “political corpse” into a “political mummy,” which can be periodically displayed before large audiences. They do not whitewash Yanukovych, but rather embalm him. The conversation with foreign journalists means that Putin uses Yanukovych to send certain vision of the situation to the West. In this regard, it is worth recalling a recent statement by the Putinist loudmouth Vladimir Solovyov, who theatrically described to his viewers how Russia would “take” all of Ukraine soon through information sabotage and guerrilla actions. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is keeping up its efforts to destabilize our country and promote a number of political projects, which should take on the role of its dagger in our ribs. It was not accidental that Putin did not “rescue” all his Ukrainian stooges. Some people have been left in this country as they still have some work to do in the future. As for the interview with the fugitive president, it raises a clear question we should pose to Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies: where are the results of the investigation of the crimes committed against Euromaidan protesters? As long as there is no real answer to this question, we will, firstly, see how Yanukovych’s “political mummy” is being gradually turned into an allegedly framed victim. Secondly, the public will increasingly wonder whether Yanukovych, who had gone too far and got entangled in his machinations, was removed from the political arena via the Euromaidan by these very people who once effectively put him in office.
