Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky said that the November incident in the Kerch Strait, when Russian border guards detained three ships of the Ukrainian Navy, was provoked by the leadership of Ukraine. This is stated in an interview on Kolomoisky on the BBC television channel published on the website of the UNIAN news agency. Earlier, British journalists announced only a small part of the conversation with the businessman, where he lacked his assessment of what happened in the strait between the banks of the Crimea and Taman.
"Affect the voters"
“We don’t see the world, and it doesn’t have to ... Poroshenko creates new conflict situations, provocations, as in the Kerch Strait,” UNIAN quotes Kolomoisky. - And to tell that the Russians did it ... The Russians did nothing there. We ourselves have created a provocative situation and sent 23 or 24 people into captivity. ”
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As the founder of the industrial-financial group Privat emphasized, the results of the “confrontation” of Petro Poroshenko with Russia are depressing: “The Crimea is lost, there is no Donbass, the war is endless”.
Earlier Kolomoisky already accused Poroshenko of deliberate provocation in the Kerch Strait. So, in December last year, in an interview with journalist Dmitry Gordon, a businessman said that the president had sent Ukrainian sailors "to die in the Kerch Strait." However, then Kolomoisky was more critical of Russia, comparing the country with a beast of prey.
“It was not up to him (Petro Poroshenko. - RT ) whether the Russian ships would start firing at them or not. But he knew who the sailors sent to: sent them into a cage with a tiger. Or do you not know that the tiger bites? So how many more people will he put in order to stay in power? ”The oligarch said then.
Kolomoisky also stressed that he considers the war in the Donbas civil, although he accused Russia of helping the DPR and LPR.
Analyzing the “warming” of Kolomoisky’s rhetoric vis-à-vis Moscow, the RT source in the Ukrainian Radical Party suggested that the entrepreneur who spoke earlier with uncompromising anti-Russian statements could rethink what is happening in Ukraine and now he is ready for dialogue with the Russian Federation.
“Perhaps he understood that he needed to sit at the negotiating table with Russia. Ukraine has no other way out. Who benefits from the war, revealed the latest high-profile investigations. It seems to me that he encourages people to think to whom they cast their votes, ”the interlocutor emphasized.
At the same time, Deputy Director of the Institute of CIS Countries Vladimir Zharikhin noted that the statement of the Ukrainian oligarch should not be regarded as a nod to the direction of our country.
“Kolomoisky is against Poroshenko and gives arguments that look like pro-Russian outwardly, but in fact they are directed primarily against the current president,” Zharikhin said. - Petro Poroshenko is an opponent of Kolomoisky, because he nationalized his Privat Bank, however, Russia is also an opponent for him, because the entrepreneur has lost control over his assets in the Crimea.
According to a member of the Council on Interethnic Relations under the President of Russia, Bogdan Bezpalko, Kolomoisky, accusing Petro Poroshenko of provocation in the Kerch Strait, is seeking to hit the president’s rating on the eve of the March 31 elections.
“Kolomoisky, who supports Zelensky and partly Tymoshenko, does not want Poroshenko to be re-elected for a second presidential term. Such statements can affect pre-election preferences of hesitant voters, ”stressed Bezpalko. “Igor Kolomoisky voices the obvious, and the matter is not at all in the pro-Russian position: it was Petro Poroshenko who needed the incident in the Kerch Strait, he used the sailors as a victim.”
The source RT in the Popular Front agrees with Bezpal'ko.
“Kolomoisky expects that these harsh statements a few days before the elections will be able to influence undecided voters,” the interlocutor of RT in the party of Yulia Tymoshenko believes.
Finish line
One of the richest people in Ukraine, the former head of the Dnipropetrovsk state administration, Igor Kolomoisky was declared an international wanted list by the Investigative Committee of Russia back in 2014. He was charged with organizing murders, using prohibited means and methods of warfare, kidnapping and obstructing the legitimate activities of journalists.
Kolomoisky was also accused of organizing punitive battalions that fought in the Donbas and support of the nationalists from the Right Sector. In 2015, after the conflict with Petro Poroshenko, Kolomoisky resigned as head of the Dnipropetrovsk region, and in 2016 the Ukrainian state nationalized the largest asset of the oligarch, Privatbank.
However, many other resources remained in the ownership of Kolomoisky, including the media holding “1 + 1 Media”, which includes the UNIAN news agency and the 1 + 1 TV channel. It is on its air from 2015 that showman Vladimir Zelensky appears regularly in the image of Ukrainian President Vasily Goloborodko. Last New Year's Eve Zelensky live on “1 + 1” announced his intention to run for the presidency of Ukraine and congratulated citizens on the New 2019 year instead of Petro Poroshenko. Since then, the media and experts immediately began to associate a new candidate with Kolomoisky.
In addition, Zelensky called his own party, which goes to the autumn elections to the Verkhovna Rada, the same way as the television series on the Kolomoisky Channel, “Servant of the People”.
Although the Ukrainian oligarch rejects claims that he is behind Zelensky’s promotion in the Ukrainian political arena, he does not hide the fact that he provides some support for the comedian, moreover, considers him the most suitable candidate for the post of head of the Ukrainian state at the moment.
According to a public opinion poll of the sociological group “Rating”, published on March 28, Vladimir Zelensky is leading among presidential candidates in Ukraine. 26.6% of defined voters are ready to support him.
- Vladimir Zelensky
- Reuters
- © Valentyn Ogirenko
The second place is shared by Petro Poroshenko and the leader of the Batkivshchyna party, Yulia Tymoshenko - they have 17% of the votes of the respondents. The third place was taken by ex-Minister of Defense Anatoly Gritsenko from 9.8%. The fourth leader is closed by the candidate from the party “Opposition platform - For Life” Yuriy Boyko with the support level of 9.5% of the votes.
According to experts, the most advantageous scenario for Kolomoisky would be a collapse of Poroshenko’s rating to such a level that he did not reach the second round at all. March 14 in an interview with Gordon Kolomoisky said that "Poroshenko does not see in the second round."
“He hopes for the victory of Zelensky, in the extreme case - Tymoshenko. For Kolomoisky it is important that Poroshenko does not win, ”said Mikhail Pogrebinsky, director of the Kiev Center for Political Studies and Conflictology, in a conversation with RT.
Aggravated relationship
A few days before the presidential election, the opposition between Kolomoisky and Poroshenko escalated. On March 26, Arthur Gerasimov, the head of the Bloc Poroshenko’s faction in the parliament, said that the president is suing the oligarch 1 + 1 channel for “systematic lies on an especially large scale”. Earlier in the program Ukrainian sensations. 50 shades of Poroshenko "head of state openly accused of corruption and of involvement in the murder of his brother Michael.
As a source in the Batkivshchyna party told RT, Poroshenko and Kolomoisky could not agree on a number of issues, which led to the aggravation of their conflict.
"Therefore, the TV channel" 1 + 1 "and chose anti-presidential rhetoric, - said the source RT. “Now Kolomoisky is telling the truth - the ships in the Kerch Strait really did not need to be sent, and the facts of corruption in the president’s circle have been proven.”
In addition, on March 27, a “1 + 1” broadcast of the new season “Servants of the People” began, in which the main antagonists of Vladimir Zelensky’s hero - Vasyl Goloborodko - are characters that visually resemble Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko. They alternately head Ukraine and lead the country to a neo-fascist coup and collapse. After that, Goloborodko comes to power in Kiev under pressure from the West.
According to experts, the obvious pro-Western rhetoric is present both in the new episodes of the series and in the statements of Kolomoisky, who, in an interview with the BBC, directly accused his opponent of being “trading with Putin,” and called on the West not to “turn a blind eye” to "What evil for Ukraine is Poroshenko".
“There is no reason to believe that Kolomoisky was seeking friendship with Russia,” Mikhail Pogrebinsky notes.
The expert also believes that the Ukrainian oligarch is primarily aimed at undermining the position of Petro Poroshenko. However, Pogrebinsky admitted that after the elections, in the event of the victory of Vladimir Zelensky, the course of Kiev in relation to Moscow “may be corrected”.