According to him, on March 1, in the department headed by him, “an operation to transfer personnel” to the Crimea “for unblocking military units” was developed and prepared.
“Personnel were trained, loaded onto airplanes that had risen and reached the sea coast of mainland Ukraine, after which the pilots received a command, turned around and returned back to the home airfields,” Zamany Interfax-Ukraine quotes.
The military also noted that at that time the Ukrainian side had enough strength to “turn the tide in its favor”.
“But there was no desire and political will,” he concluded.
At the same time, according to UNIAN, Zamana stressed that "he did not see official documents on this matter, but he was told."
On May 24, the Kiev Court of Appeal decided to release Vladimir Zaman, who was detained on suspicion of treason, “under a personal obligation”. He was arrested on February 26th.
In March last year, Zamana also said that at the beginning of 2014, the Ukrainian authorities allegedly began to transfer troops to the territory of the Crimea, but later "someone gave the command to return them" to places of permanent deployment.
Crimea became the Russian region after the referendum held there in March 2014, in which the majority of the inhabitants of the peninsula spoke in favor of reunification with Russia.