The history of the past three years is all about the pain and blood of Ukraine. The question of who is to blame and who brought the country to such a state will sooner or later top the agenda. If there are no fair conclusions, there is no guarantee that something similar, or even worse, will not happen again in the future.
It is no secret that several groups of influence have for many years been fighting for power in Ukraine. As a result of squabbles between third president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko his former companion in the Orange Revolution Yulia Tymoshenko, Viktor Yanukovych won the elections in 2010, using the same pro-European rhetoric. The voting was recognized as fair and democratic. The total power of the Party of Regions and their exorbitant appetites were gradually heating up protest moods across the country. The Rubicon was crossed when Yanukovych did a quiet coup when via the Constitutional Court he regained the powers that the Ukrainian people had not conferred to him. The corrupt elite of 2010-2014 (it is not sinless today, either) actively exploited the European fairy tale in order not only to save power, but also with the help of their "struggle against fascism, Banderism and nationalism" to be re-elected in 2015. By the way, November 28, 2016 Yanukovych said at his Rostov presser that he had not given up on his authority as president. Moreover, he expressed confidence that he would have been re-elected for a second term had he signed an Association Agreement with the EU in Vilnius. At the time, representing Ukraine at the summit of Eastern Partnership held in the Lithuanian capital, Yanukovych was unlikely to assume that exactly three years later he would be testifying in court on these events.
Colorful European future was fed to the people through the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. Ukrainian authorities have always positioned the document as an important step in the transition in the future to the next stage - the preparation for EU accession. It was the Cabinet of Yanukovych-Azarov which completed the negotiations with the EU. March 30, 2012 the heads of delegations of Ukraine and the EU initialed the Association Agreement with the European Union.
Yanukovych said at his Rostov presser that he had not given up on his authority as president. Moreover, he expressed confidence that he would have been re-elected for a second term
During his interrogation on November 28, Viktor Yanukovych repeatedly called himself an adherent of Euro-integration. However, it remained untold, why almost overnight, the opinion on this matter of the then-head of state changed so drastically. How could it be that after all those lengthy negotiations and the initialing of the document, only in Vilnius did he realize that the Agreement was “disadvantageous” for Ukraine? Yanukovych also tried to put the blame on the journalists who supposedly had not told the truth about the threats of deepening Ukraine’s cooperation with Europe, which subsequently led to the Maidan uprising, months-long confrontation, the killing of more than a hundred Ukrainians, his escape to Russia and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Curiously, the prosecutors during the interrogation repeatedly asked the fugitive president, with whom of the Russian leaders he had contacted when the Ukrainian citizens were getting shot downtown Kyiv. They wanted to know, when and on what occasion he held phone conversations with Vladimir Putin and his aide Vyacheslav Surkov.
In turn, Yanukovych offered the prosecution to visit the President's official website where the schedule of his contacts is published, "in accordance" with the law. Ukrainian investigators are doing hard work to reveal all traces left in the days of the bloody massacre at the Maidan. However, they should consider digging into something that happened a bit earlier.
A month before the Vilnius summit, Yanukovych flew for secret negotiations with the Russian president, at least three times. The meetings were held in Sochi and Moscow. Then, the Yanukovych administration strongly denied the fact of such negotiations, launching petty spins, saying that the talks were held somewhere at military airfields.
The key meeting took place in the Kremlin overnight November 6, 2013. Yanukovych flew to Moscow by himself, on a chartered plane, accompanied only by a small group of bodyguards. He was then brought to the Kremlin incognito, beyond protocol. These top-secret talks began Saturday afternoon, November 5, ending in the at the dawn of the next day, November 6.
Ukrainian investigators are doing hard work to reveal all traces left in the days of the bloody massacre at the Maidan. However, they should consider digging into something that happened a bit earlier
The presidents spoke tet-a-tet first. However, in the course of this secret meeting, they were joined by members of Putin's team. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov who supervised loans, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller who was in charge of gas prices, and First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov who coordinated the Customs Union. This is when Yanukovych was effectively recruited.
From that moment there came a sharp change in the rhetoric of the party in power in Ukraine, whose talking heads began their talk about the threats of the EU deal. A bit later, then-PM Mykola Azarov said that the rapprochement with Europe suggested legalizing same-sex marriage and adoption of the law on the equality of sexual minorities.
Yanukovych was cornered. In any scenario, the country faced an economic turmoil. "A friend and neighbor" Putin, through the gas agreement signed by Tymoshenko in 2009, had pumped out all Ukrainian reserves. We needed a whopping external financial aid. The Russian president late December 2014 announced the essence of the deal with Yanukovych. Guided only by "fraternal feelings to the Ukrainian people," Moscow offered Yanukovych a $15 billion loan out of the blue and reduced the gas price by 30%. The Kremlin even chose not to remind anyone about the Customs Union, amid Kyiv protests. And this was the price of refusal from the Association with the EU.
That was the deal with the Kremlin which led to the Revolution and the overthrow of the Yanukovych regime. Ukrainians never forgave the betrayal of their European dream. And Putin could not forgive the Ukrainians for the expulsion of his pet Yanukovych and started the war.
