MOSCOW, March 10. /TASS/. A high-ranking member of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, said Tuesday Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s decision to keep staking on the military solution to the conflict in east Ukraine to crush the political and civil opposition there is a tragic mistake.
"The fact that Mr. Poroshenko keeps submitting to parliament bills that are in this or that way connected with the prospect of a military solution to the conflict seems to me the deepest mistake on the part of the current Ukrainian leadership," the Federation Council’s international affairs committee chairman Konstantin Kosachyov told journalists.
He said "the forces which had supported Mr. Poroshenko and his government at the initial stage" changed their mind and started holding a similar viewpoint. "I mean European countries of the West, not the United States yet, that are becoming more sober," he said.
"We see problems [in Ukraine] only degraded, the scale of the economic crisis in Ukraine sharply worsened," Kosachyov stated. The senator said this often happens because the Ukrainian government is incapable.
- Analysts: NATO Black Sea drills, US military aid no way to make peace in Ukraine
- Ukraine sets task of building Europe's strongest army, returning Crimea — security chief
- Ukraine’s parliament adopts law on increasing army size to 250,000 people
- Russian diplomat says US airborne troops being redeployed to Ukraine
- US troops to hold joint drills with Ukraine’s army in mid-2015
"The Ukrainian economy is insufficient, it can only exist when it has external support," he said, adding that "Ukraine only acquired additional problems through radicalism of the Maidan [Independence Square in downtown Kiev, the symbol of Ukrainian protests, used collectively to denote the protest movement] when the country lost Russian support."
Kosachyov said the problems worsen when the stake is made on military force. "Some $5-6 million was spent on the antiterrorism operation daily. Few economies in the world will manage to afford it. And it is surely not the Ukrainian economy," he said.
On March 6, President Poroshenko submitted to parliament a bill to allow foreign states’ armed forces units to take part in multinational military exercises in 2015. The document is expected to confirm the head of state’s decision on the issue. The draft law’s text is currently not available on the parliament’s website.
Such decisions are made in Ukraine annually. The consent of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, is required for joint drills on Ukrainian territory. A relevant bill is submitted by the country’s president.
The Ukrainian parliament approved a similar decision on the part of the Ukrainian president in April 2014.
The document regulated issues of the strength of foreign military formations allowed to enter the country for drills, "the type and number of armaments, military hardware, the period of stay and deployment sites for the period of exercises."