MOSCOW, March 31, /ITAR-TASS/. Kiev’s plans to use private military companies to maintain law and order in the country testify to its inability to ensure security, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Monday, March 31.
“Mass media reports mention plans of the present Ukrainian authorities to hire foreign private military companies to ‘ensure law and order’, in other words, to preserve the Kiev regime and suppress civil protests and discontent,” the ministry said. “The Barbados-registered company Greystone Ltd., which is part of the Academi Corporation, is named among the candidates for such police role. This is an analogue or probably an affiliated structure of the Blackwater private army, whose personnel have been repeatedly accused of cruel and systematic violations of human rights in different trouble spots around the world.”
“Obviously, this practice, if it is employed in reality, will violate Ukrainian legislation which bans the participation of foreign citizens in the work of even private security companies in Ukraine. Such initiatives reflect the inability of those who have grabbed power in Kiev to ensure minimum order in the country and evidently their own security,” the ministry said.
“This also raises a logical question about the cost and the sources of funding for hiring mercenaries,” it said. “To what extent will the cost of hiring highly-paid foreign ‘specialists’ be shifted to ordinary Ukrainians who already have to tighten their belts even more following sensitive rises in taxes and, among others, gas tariffs (as a condition for IMF loans)?” the ministry said.
“One way or another, we can state that in the absence of support from the Ukrainian population, the Maidan government has only one way to preserve its power - by mobilising all kinds of support from foreign sponsors, including the use of foreign mercenaries,” the ministry said.