DHAKA, September 8. /TASS/. The current crisis in Ukraine is caused, among other things, by historical contradictions between its western and eastern regions, which the leaders of the former Soviet Union failed to smooth out by uniting them into one union republic, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting with representatives of the Bangladeshi association of graduates of Soviet and Russian universities at the Russian embassy.
Lavrov recalled that the territories where threats were now emerging near Russia's borders "were part of both the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, and ended up as part of Ukraine only because it was one state then."
"As is known, Vladimir Lenin transferred Donbass to Ukraine, pooling it with western Ukraine. That’s how there emerged a very strange ‘animal’," Lavrov recalled. "Our leaders in the Soviet Union experimented, thinking that by combining Russian regions with western regions, where nationalists prevailed, some kind of mixture could emerge, which would not be as radical as the Banderites, who before, during and after the war committed a tremendous number of crimes against civilians - Poles, Jews, Russians, and Ukrainians as well."
"Donbass will never celebrate the birthdays of Bandera, Shukhevich and other Nazi criminals. These birthdays are celebrated in Kiev, Lvov and other parts of western Ukraine, where they will never celebrate May 9 as Victory Day, while for Donbass and Crimea it is a holy day," Lavrov said, adding it was an example of the different worldviews of the people of Donbass and western Ukraine.