SIMFEROPOL, March 22, /ITAR-TASS/. Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov urged the people of Ukraine to fight against Kiev’s drive for association with the European Union, which he said would be fatal for the country.
In his televised address to the people of Ukraine on Saturday, March 22, Aksyonov noted that “a movement in support of our traditional and the only legitimate political and economic union with the Russian state is now gaining momentum” in many Ukrainian regions. “I ask you to support it for the sake of our common good! Rise to fight for a decent future, for our common future!” CrimeaInform quoted him as saying.
The prime minister stressed that this fight would not be directed against Ukraine as a state because “only you can save it”.
Aksyonov believes that “the impostors in Kiev are step by step taking” the country to the brink of an abyss and if the economic part of the association agreement with the European Union is signed, “if of course you allow it to be signed, you will face unjustifiably high taxes and prices, inflation and growing unemployment, and a higher retirement age beyond the average life expectancy.”
All industry and agriculture not only in the southeast but also in other parts of Ukraine will be destroyed within months after the association agreement with the EU enters into force. “Millions of people will be left without means of existence and will only have to choose between dying or becoming forced labour migrants,” he warned. “And all this just to allow home-bred Ukrainian oligarchs to continue to reap the benefits, comfortably and unhindered, by plundering their own people and for a bunch of Nazi politicians to get a ticket for reigning and realising their cannibal ideas of ‘the purity of the Ukrainian nation’ and assimilation of ‘non-indigenous people’.”
The prime minister noted that he could not stay aside even though no such threat existed for the people of Crimea any more. “I appeal to you and urge you to fight! I have no right to urge you to separate from Ukraine. But I will urge you to fight for your right to decent life,” Aksyonov said, adding that this was his “human and civil duty”.
He urged Ukrainians to “resist the choice” made for them by “a bunch of adventurists financed by comprador oligarchs”. “I urge you to rise to defend your own freedom, rights and interests, which I am confident can be ensured only in close alliance political, economic and cultural with the Russian Federation,” he said.
Aksyonov stressed that he was not speaking on behalf of Russia or its leadership but was expressing his own view and the opinion of the multiethnic people of Crimea.