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Crack police veteran in Crimea says rioting in Kiev could have been stopped easily

SIMFEROPOL, March 01 /ITAR-TASS/. A veteran of Ukraine’s Berkut crack police force in the Crimea is certain that aggressive actions by rioters in Kiev’s Independence Square could have been prevented or stopped virtually in no time.

“It was quite realistic to end the rioting,” Vladimir Krashevsky, board chairman of the Berkut force veterans’ society, told Itar-Tass. “Unrest must be quashed during the very first hours. There where the first stones have been hurled ‘Molotov cocktails’ will follow in a week, and firearms will begin to be used in two. That scenario has been practiced many a time in many countries, including those in the West.”

Krashevsky disagrees with those who say that the Right Sector radical movement was the main force that confronted the crack police in Kiev.

“I do not think so,” he said. “There was a handful of people from UNA-UNSO, who had a previous record of fighting in Chechnya and other trouble spots. But they could have been beaten back in no time. Provided there were the orders.”

The crack police veteran believes that “the new authorities will now start getting rid of the militants.”

“The rioters have done their job, they are no longer necessary,” he said.

“The situation in Ukraine is unstable. In Kiev there are already some people who are angry about the new authorities. Pretty soon we shall have a situation we have seen in some Arab countries. Every week a new government will take over,” Krashevsky warned.

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