MOSCOW, July 22 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine is a dysfunctional and divided country with President Petro Poroshenko being unable to reunify it, Ken Livingstone, a former London mayor and a prominent British politician, told RT television.
“The simple fact is Ukraine is a dysfunctional country, it is not being brought together by its new president [Petro Poroshenko] who needs to offer reassurance both to the people in eastern Ukraine and to Russian people that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO, will not bring nuclear weapons onto its soil threatening Russia,” Livingstone said in an interview published Monday.
Kiev authorities also need to reassure residents of eastern Ukraine “that they are not in any way dominated or treated as second-class citizens. They need some sort of devolved government like we have here in Britain for our Welsh and Scottish minorities,” Livingstone said.
As of now, it looks like Kiev is not ready to make “any concessions that could bring this civil war to an end,” the Labor Party politician stated.
“Let's make it clear, Russia did not destabilize Ukraine. Ukraine has had a succession of pretty awful governments, it is a divided nation, it was put together hurriedly after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Livingstone stressed.
Moscow just wants “a secure stable state on the border with Russia which is not a threat to it,“ the former mayor underlined.
Kiev authorities launched a special military operation in the east of Ukraine in mid-April in a crackdown on the country’s growing independence movement centered there. Hundreds of people, including civilians have died over the past months as a result of the conflict.
Moscow, which describes the ongoing military actions as a punitive operation, has called for an immediate end to the bloodshed, but despite numerous promises to initiate the de-escalation process, Kiev has so far not made any moves to stop the conflict.
