KIEV, May 13. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s presidential candidate Sergei Tigipko said on Tuesday that the interim authorities in Kiev had an opportunity for dialogue with Eastern Ukraine but were unwilling to use that opportunity.

“I melt when asked whom they should talk to in southeastern Ukraine. We are talking about the country’s unity but we are unwilling to accommodate the country’s (southeastern) regions,” Tigipko said in an interview with Ukraine’s ICTV television company.

“The Donetsk and Luhansk regions have a total population of 7 million. There are many brave and responsible people there, Heroes of Ukraine who are respected in society. And you say you do not know whom to talk to there. I believe that they (the interim authorities in Kiev) simply do not want to talk to anybody because they are afraid of losing their ratings in Western Ukraine,” the presidential candidate stressed, saying the authorities in Kiev were either failing or simply could not react to the needs of people residing in the east and south of Ukraine.

“What have they done?” Tigipko put a rhetorical question. “They have done nothing except for launching an anti-terror operation to which there is no end in sight,” he said, replying to his own question.

In Tigipko’s view, the authorities in Kiev “were losing a war in the minds of people who have stopped believing them and have started hating them instead”.