MOSCOW, March 18, 23:34 /ITAR-TASS/. Russia expressed concern on Tuesday over “a clear deficit of attention in the US and the European Union to representatives of ultranationalist forces in Ukraine’s executive bodies claiming legitimacy”.
“This blatant short-sightedness is difficult to explain, and it is apparently connected with continuing devotion to geopolitical schemes with an anti-Russian tilt,” the ministry said.
“Representatives of the All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda hold some key positions in Kiev, including the positions of deputy prime minister and defence minister,” said a commentary of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
“The program of that party, which succeeded to the Social-National Party of Ukraine built on a Nazi pattern, envisages a set of anti-democratic measures, including the bracket ’nationality’ in identification documents, stripping the citizens who are simultaneously citizens of another state of citizenship, criminal responsibility for ‘anti-Ukrainian’ activity, tough restrictions on the use of any languages other than Ukrainian in public life,” the ministry said.
“It is stressed that Ukraine must be successor of the state proclaimed in a decree of June 30, 1941 which, in particular, stated a bid to fight jointly with Hitler’s Germany for ‘a new order’ in Europe and the world. The task is being set to restore the nuclear status of Ukraine,” it said.
With that in view, the Foreign Ministry recalled that back in December 2012, the European Parliament passed a resolution in which “views of Svoboda were called racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic, and an appeal was made to all parties in the Ukrainian parliament advocating democracy to refrain from cooperation with that organization,” it said.
“However, all this does not prevent top officials in the US and the EU from maintaining contacts with Svoboda, including its leader Oleg Tyagnibok,” ministry sources said. “At the same time, the West makes attempts to play down the importance of dependence of the current Kiev authorities on far-right armed groups prevailing on Maidan, which is still in place in the centre of Kiev,” the ministry noted. “This position is all the more surprising as inside the EU itself, political forces that profess ultra-nationalist views suffer ostracism,” it said.
“We are glad to hear among politicians and experts in western countries sober voices calling for an end of cooperation with neo-Nazi activists. However, those who make decisions in western capitals continue pretending in public that nothing alarming is going on in Ukraine and that the regime manned with such activists can respect the interests of all citizens of the country,” it said.