Interfax: Russia not financing unrest in eastern Ukraine – senator

(Interfax – April 9, 2014) Andrey Klimov, deputy head of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, has said the US State Department statements about unrest in eastern Ukraine being sponsored by Russia are absurd, Russian privately-owned news agency Interfax reported on 8 April.

“Such statements are absolutely groundless and absurd. If Americans use these methods in their work somewhere in the world, it does not mean that other countries use the same methods,” Klimov was quoted as saying.

He said the USA had spent 5bn dollars on Ukraine and the EU – about 200m euros. According to Klimov, “the Russian budget or the budget of our organizations, either commercial or non-profit ones, have never had anything close to this”. “So the State Department should not lay the blame at others’ door,” the senator added.

Klimov also said he had no doubts that the US secret services, which he believes are deployed in eastern Ukraine, are now working for the Ukrainian authorities.

“There are definitely representatives of the American expert community and of different secret services of NATO member countries, and I do not rule out that there are various kinds of special-purpose forces. It is not necessary that these special-purpose forces should work for the US public structures, they may well be sent by some private companies, which Americans have repeatedly done,” Klimov said.

He also said the situation in Crimea should not be compared to that in eastern Ukraine, particularly, in Donetsk, whose residents plan to hold a referendum on its future independence.

“Under the Ukrainian constitution, Crimea was the republic of Crimea, which has its legitimately elected parliament and no-one doubted its legitimacy. And it was this particular legitimate parliament elected by the people of Crimea that adopted a number of important decisions, including ones on its independence and accession to the Russian Federation. And all of this was done within the powers of the legitimate parliament,” Klimov stressed.

According to him, the forces in eastern Ukraine were acting under the influence of emotions.

“If the interim Ukrainian authorities do not rock this boat and bring the country to the point of homicide, Russia will have no reason to address the issues with the use of force, the enforcement of peace. But if people do not understand obvious things and, God forbid, start fighting – under the guise of a fight against terrorism – with people who speak the Russian language and do not really respect the Kiev authorities, in this case we certainly are in a position to react not only in a political-legal way, all the more so the Federation Council gave the supreme commander all the necessary decisions in this respect, giving its consent for using the armed forces on the Ukrainian territory until the situation in this country settles down,” Klimov said.

“We hope that this scenario will never be put into practice. Today all responsibility rests with those people in Kiev who appointed themselves responsible for the fate of Ukraine, having saddled themselves with this overwhelming task,” Klimov added.