MOSCOW, October 28. /TASS/. The elections in Ukraine give a chance for the Kiev authorities to revise the destructive policy and stop cultivating the image of Russia as an enemy, head of the Russian Federal Agency for the CIS Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation Konstantin Kosachev told TASS on Tuesday.

“The attempts to divide their own population into indigenous people and those who are not related to them is a mad tragic mistake of the current Ukrainian authorities, in any case of radicals in this power,” he said.

According to the official, Russian-Ukrainian humanitarian cooperation is under Kiev’s tough pressure. “The official policy of the Ukrainian authorities is to block humanitarian cooperation between our countries as maximum and not to maintain it as minimum. The state policy is to form an image of Russia as an enemy, the country where the threat comes from and with what one can build no relations, including contacts within civil societies,” Kosachev said.

However, “The interest in Russia and in maintaining public, humanitarian, including youth relations, with Russia has not disappeared. And in recent months this interest has been growing”, he said.

“We traditionally invite Ukrainian students to study in Russia. This year the demand has been even higher than in previous years,” Kosachev said.

The humanitarian sphere aroused people’s concern when they watched the events in Maidan. “If the Kiev authorities understand this, start correcting the policy and being respectful to the population irrespective of what language people speaks and nationality as many countries on the European continent do. If Ukraine takes this European experience and not only the economic and political model, social peace will return to the country and relations between Moscow and Kiev will normalise rapidly,” he said.