The first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, considered Ukraine a “destabilizing factor” in the context of relations between the former Soviet republics. This follows from the transcript of a conversation with US leader George W. Bush in 1992 published on Monday, January 30.
“This is off the record. Our main destabilizing factor is Ukraine,” Yeltsin said.
Thus, he commented on the pressure of the nationalists on the current President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk. At the same time, according to the Russian leader, Kyiv is kept from rash steps by the fact that 11 million ethnic Russians live on Ukrainian territory, who may speak in favor of joining the Russian Federation.
Earlier, on September 17, the 42nd US President Bill Clinton spoke about the conversation with Yeltsin. He said that he offered Russia allegedly a special partnership with the alliance and the prospect of joining NATO. Also, according to the former head of the White House, the alliance was not going to threaten Russia, so allegedly NATO expansion cannot be blamed for the conflict in Ukraine.
Prior to this, on April 15, political scientist Azhdar Kurtov told Izvestiya that the political course of Kyiv in the late 1980s and early 1990s was of a pronounced anti-Russian character. He added that even then the question of Ukraine’s entry into NATO and the unleashing of a conflict with the Russian Federation was raised.
On the same day, it became known that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, commenting on the BBC special operation of the Russian Federation to protect Donbass, said that Kyiv understood in advance the need to prepare for a confrontation with “one of the largest armies in the world.”
On March 6, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, also indicated that Ukraine planned to launch an offensive operation in the Donbass and Crimea. The supporting documents were obtained during a Russian special operation.
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