‘US wants to make Ukraine anti-Russian state’ – senior Duma MP
The head of the lower house Foreign Relations Committee believes Ukrainian President-elect Petro Poroshenko tends to work on instructions from Washington, and these concentrate on making Ukraine an anti-Russian state.
“I get the impression that Poroshenko is completely oriented toward the United States, that the European Union is a second priority project for him. He connects his political ambitions mostly with Washington,” MP Aleksey Pushkov said in an interview with the mass circulation daily Izvestia.
He elaborated that European leaders mostly want the situation in Ukraine to stabilize, while the United States seeks to turn the country into “an openly anti-Russian nation, in future dragging it into NATO.”
Pushkov noted that Poroshenko’s behavior can be explained by the current political situation in his country.
“Today the country is run by forces that see conflict with Russia as a self-sufficient objective. The conflict helps Kiev to establish the national identity that is not being formed from within, but results from the standoff with Moscow. This is the identity they intend to use to gain ground in the international political arena,” the MP said.
According to Pushkov, all recent statements from the new Ukrainian leader are far from reality. In particular, the promises not to buy natural gas from Russia, relying on reverse supplies from Europe were unfounded as not all countries could organize the reverse traffic and the reserves of the gas are not sufficient for Ukraine’s needs.
“Such hopes are nonsense. Poroshenko will have to deal with Russia,” the legislator stated.
Pushkov also said in the interview that Russia will not be taking part in the June session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. This was a reaction to recently introduced sanctions – PACE deprived the Russian delegation of the voting right, denied participation in monitoring missions and ruling bodies of the organization till the end of the year.
In reply, Russia decided to completely suspend the cooperation with PACE and State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin informed the assembly’s chair, Anne Brasseur, about this decision in an official letter, Pushkov told the newspaper. He added that participation with no rights had hardly any benefits and noted that Russia was among PACE’s largest donors, with 23 million euro (US$31.4 million) transferred to the assembly’s budget.
“The assembly sees the emergence of a new united front of people who do not want to know the truth and who reject even the obvious facts. Their task is to launch an Inquisition process against Russia and to substantiate the western support of the Kiev regime,” Pushkov said.
In was Aleksey Pushkov who first called upon the Russian delegation to PACE to leave the body’s sessions in protest of sanctions.
“We admit the possibility that the anti-Russian passions could prevail in PACE, but in this case we consider it necessary not to allow the vote to strip the Russian delegation of its powers. If we see that is likely the Russian delegation would walk out of the session before the actual vote and thus there will be no one to deprive of powers. We will not give our opponents the pleasure to vote for our exemption,” Pushkov said in a parliamentary speech in early April.
