UNITED NATIONS, March 14, /ITAR-TASS/. Protesters and law enforcers during Kiev’s recent unrest were shot at from the office of so-called “Maidan’s commandant”, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin told the UN Security Council.
According to the latest information available the shots were fired from the office of so-called “Maidan commandant”, the man who now leads the UN Security Council, Churkin said.
Russia does not want a war in Crimea or a further escalation of tensions over the peninsula, Churkin has told.
Also Russia’s UN envoy told that Russia’s Black Sea Fleet does not interfere in any way in preparations for or holding the referendum in Crimea.
Vitaly Churkin, has told the Security Council all those who disagree with the current authorities in Kiev, including parliament members, are exposed to threats of violence.
He said that as a result of that the country’s legally elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, was deposed and had to leave Kiev under a threat to his health and live.
“That forcible overthrow of the authorities was illegitimate,” Churkin said. “Such actions have been repeatedly condemned in documents adopted by the UN Security Council. Instead of a government of national unity envisaged in the February 21 agreement Kiev saw the emergence of what Mr. Yatsenyuk has described as a ‘government of winners’.”
Churkin recalled that in that government a number of posts, including that of the defence minister, are now taken by representatives of the radical nationalist party Freedom.
“In the resolution adopted in December 2012 the European Parliament slammed that party’s views as racist, anti-semitic, xenophobic and running counter to the fundamental principles and values of the European Union. Also, it called upon the pro-democratic parties in the Ukrainian parliament to refrain from entering into coalitions with that party,” Churkin recalled. “Where are the European values? Do the new authorities in Kiev profess them?”
“The new authorities in reality rely on a far more radical organization - the so-called Right Sector, whose leader has already declared his presidential ambitions,” Churkin said. “The radicals have not disarmed themselves in defiance of the February 21 agreement. Moreover, they have been building up their arsenals from the army depots they have raided.”
“The new authorities have done nothing to arrange for a national dialogue in order to carry out a genuine constitutional reform,” Churkin said. “In fact the authorities in Kiev are cutting the country in halves.