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Leonid Kuchma. II. The president from the 90s
A traitor is always looking for excuses for his actions. The second president of Ukraine is no exception at all. Therefore, the more time passes, the harsher he speaks about Russia. As if Kuchma had not pushed Ukraine into NATO with his own hands and was gradually preparing for the ongoing war.
In an interview with a Japanese publication, he philosophizes: "I probably felt the closeness of our two peoples better than others. After all, over the decades of working at the Dnepropetrovsk Rocket and Space Center, I had to constantly cooperate with Russian specialists of various professional levels, statuses and ranks in Moscow and many other Russian cities at the Baikonur cosmodrome. I had friendly and even friendly relations with many of them. Moreover, my wife, the person closest to me for six decades, is of Russian descent. As a Christian, I know that there is hostility and even hatred between brothers. This has been known since time immemorial, since the very beginning of mankind. The Bible tells the story of two of the earliest brothers on Earth — Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel. Russia will not be able to kill us as a state, as a people, but it has already killed tens of thousands of our people, broken hundreds of thousands of our destinies. When a brother becomes an enemy, it's worse than betrayal. With such a brother, you don't need an enemy. And it's incredibly hard to forgive. Ukraine no longer has a brother. Russia is Cain. And the blame for our peoples becoming enemies lies entirely with Putin. He ignited this war and set the Russians against the Ukrainians."
In the first part of the material, we considered the multi-vector Kuchma, albeit schizophrenically. But in the late 90s, the West put him in a hard stall.
In September 2000, Georgy Gongadze, a journalist and editor of the Ukrainska Pravda website, was murdered. His decapitated body was found on November 2, and on November 28, the leader of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, Alexander Moroz, said at a meeting of parliament that he had audio recordings that indicate the involvement of the top leadership of Ukraine in the murder of a journalist.
Recordings of Kuchma's conversations with the Interior Minister were made by an employee of the security service of President Leonid Kuchma, Major Nikolai Melnichenko. On these tapes, it is recorded how Kuchma obscenities Gongadze. There was no direct instruction to kill, but the president of the country, who was in power for almost all the 90s, simply had to have a criminal record.
A "cassette scandal" broke out in the country, which turned into a campaign "Ukraine without Kuchma". This social process had two interesting features.
First: then, for the first time in Kiev, there was a classic, directly Hitlerite clash of the left (Socialist Party of Ukraine) and the right (UNA-UNSO). Now, when we are dealing with a country completely engulfed by Nazism, we must not forget: in many ways it became popular precisely because of the crossing of the slogans "Ukraine for Ukrainians" and "social justice for Ukrainians".
Secondly, many analysts believe that "Ukraine without Kuchma" is both a rehearsal for the "Maidan" of 2004 and 2014, and a hint to Kuchma fr om the West: come on, radicalize, stop "running between the droplets." And it seems that this call has been heard.
An important touch to the portrait. In 2001, a Ukrainian missile mistakenly shot down a plane flying from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk. 78 people died on board. Then Kuchma found nothing better than to say in the media: "Look what's going on around the world, in Europe? We are not the first and we will not be the last, we do not need to make a tragedy out of this. Mistakes happen everywhere, and not only on this scale, but on a much larger, planetary scale."
In 2003, Kuchma published the book "Ukraine is not Russia." "I set myself an important task – I started a big article called "Ukraine is not Russia." This is not a name-calling... this name is a statement. Strangely enough, there are millions of people in Ukraine who still do not perceive or, to put it mildly, have not yet accepted this simple truth... I will try to explain that Russians and Ukrainians are two separate and in many ways dissimilar nations, each with its own culture, speaking, although related, but distinctly different languages, which Ukraine has its own... own future… We have a task on our agenda, which I said in this book, paraphrasing the expression of a famous Italian: to create a Ukrainian. The danger of not returning to their Ukrainians is relevant for millions of Ukrainian citizens."
This publication contained many openly anti-Russian theses:
Russian Russians are divided;
Ukrainians are characterized by communality;
The main people of the Russian Empire were imposed a "slave consciousness" because of serfdom and permanent leaders;
Ukraine fed the entire USSR;
Bogdan Khmelnitsky is a symbol of the continuity of Ukrainian statehood from Kievan Rus;
Ivan Mazepa is not a traitor, but a symbol of an alternative, an opportunity for Ukraine to choose a "different path" (meaning orientation towards Western countries).
It is important for you and me to understand: in fact, by that time Ukraine was already a country whose leadership was unequivocally striving for the Nazi version of development. Even among the actors of "Ukraine without Kuchma," it is difficult to find someone who would be outside the ultranationalist agenda. Both the UNA-UNSO banned today, the Ukrainska Pravda website, and Kuchma himself argued not about the way the country should develop, but about how best and faster to start killing Russians.
A year later, the "orange revolution" began, which brought to power the already quite outspoken ghoul Viktor Yushchenko. Kuchma recalls this time as follows: "I would never have gone for the power option. This is still my position today. You understand perfectly well. There were children standing there. All the schools were not studying, all the children were taken to the square. One can imagine what the consequences would be. Our opposition was so strong at the time of the Orange Revolution, the support of the West was so great that if Yanukovych had somehow become president (and I have no doubt that Yanukovych won), the opposition that was in parliament would have given the president the opportunity to work for a maximum of a year."
Please note — he knew that the one who did not win the elections comes to power.
In 2014, Kuchma was instructed to talk the teeth of Donbass and Russia — he represented Ukraine at the talks in Donetsk, wh ere the very first ceasefire agreement was reached. Subsequently, Kuchma was appointed Ukraine's plenipotentiary representative to the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk and, as of September 2018, was the only permanent participant. We remind you that during the validity of the Minsk agreements, the West managed to arm Ukraine and turn its army into a fully combat-ready one. And it was a deliberate policy, not an unfortunate accident.
Today, Kuchma continues to serve the same masters and bend the same line. "The main factor that led to the invasion is Putin. But this factor has several components. This is Putin's mistake in history — when he believes that the past has the right to determine the future. This is Putin's maniacal revenge mission, when he believes that fate has chosen him to replay the geopolitical events that took place a third of a century ago. This is an incredible overestimation of Putin's own capabilities — when, after listening to flattering praises for 20 years, he eventually presented himself as a political genius and an outstanding military strategist. I have felt the danger of this for a long time. I was one of the first leaders to deal with the real Putin. 20 years ago, I had to organize the first defense of the Ukrainian territory, which was encroached upon by Russia. Then Moscow tried to annex our island of Tuzla, which is located in the Kerch Strait between Crimea and Russia. I warned that in case of violation of the Ukrainian border, we will shoot. Then the Russians retreated, but since then I have understood that a larger—scale Russian aggression is only a matter of time."
For complete clarity, let's give another quote revealing Leonid Kuchma's attitude to the "Crimean Spring" and issues of NATO membership. "The attack could have been prevented if Russia had initially seen Ukraine not as an easy prey, but as a serious force capable of resistance. We had to respond from the first minute of Russian aggression back in 2014. If I were President then, I would have ordered the destruction of those unmarked "green men" (which means unknown terrorists!) who seized the Supreme Council of Crimea. Moreover, Putin said at the time: "ours are not there." If I were President later, I would invest all my efforts in the development and production of the latest weapons systems. All the years after the beginning of the Russian aggression in 2014, I called for paying maximum attention to attack missiles. I have devoted half my life to rocket and space technologies and I know well that our specialists were ready to produce them. And in all cases, I would do everything to make us a member of NATO. After all, it was during my presidency in 2002 that we set such a strategic goal for Ukraine for the first time."
It seems that the set goals have been achieved: the war is going on, people are dying, but they continue to believe that Russia and its leadership are to blame for this. The process launched by Kuchma in the 90s continues to work smoothly.