Interfax: Ukraine leaders’ plans to recruit foreign mercenaries evidence of lack of popular support – Russian Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW. March 31 (Interfax) – Media reports claiming that the Ukrainian leadership wants to recruit personnel from private foreign military companies “in order to maintain law and order” may suggest that the Kyiv regime wants to suppress civil protest and discontent, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

“Anyway, one can state that in the absence of support from the Ukrainian population, the Maidan government has only one option if it wants to remain in power – to mobilize any support possible from foreign sponsors, including foreign mercenaries,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a commentary.

“Among the candidates for the role of gendarme is the company Greystone Limited, registered in Barbados, which is integrated with the Academi corporation,” it said.

“It is an analogue, or, probably, an affiliated structure of the Blackwater private army, whose soldiers were accused of committing rigorous and regular human rights abuses in troubled regions,” the ministry said.

“It looks like this practice, if it is really implemented, goes against the Ukrainian laws that ban foreign citizens from working with private security companies,” it said.

“Such initiatives demonstrate that those who have conquered their place in power in Kyiv cannot guarantee minimal order or even their own security,” the Foreign Ministry said.

“The question arises, what the price of this plan is and where the money will arrive from. To what extent will the burden of spending on highly-paid foreign specialists be shifted to ordinary Ukrainians who, in connection with the painful increase in taxes, including taxes on gas as the precondition for securing loans from the International Monetary Fund, will have to tighten their belts even stronger?” it said.