Dmitry Ryurikov, a former foreign affairs aide to Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, assessed information from a declassified US transcript of a conversation between Yeltsin and former US President George W. Bush.
From the published transcript it follows that in 1992 Boris Yeltsin called Ukraine the main destabilizing factor.
In a conversation with Lenta.Ru on Tuesday, January 31, Ryurikov noted that it was a very long time ago, and he does not remember such conversations.
“I don’t remember such conversations. I have some notes, but I don’t remember anything like that in the notes, ”said Ryurikov.
According to him, it is difficult to say whether such a statement corresponded to Yeltsin’s position, since “Boris Nikolayevich was a man who could say very different things.”
The day before, the United States declassified a number of documents from which it follows that Yeltsin viewed Ukraine as a destabilizing factor. According to the transcript, Yeltsin, at a meeting with Bush Sr. in 1992, stated that there were 11 million ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and Ukrainian nationalists were putting pressure on then-president Leonid Kravchuk.
At the same time, according to Yeltsin, Kyiv was deterred from rash steps by the fact that 11 million ethnic Russians might speak out in favor of joining the Russian Federation.
In April last year, political scientist Azhdar Kurtov told Izvestia that the political course of Kyiv in the late 1980s and early 1990s was clearly anti-Russian. He added that even then the question of Ukraine’s entry into NATO and the unleashing of a conflict with the Russian Federation was raised.
On the same day, it became known that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, commenting on the BBC’s special operation of the Russian Federation to protect Donbass, said that Kyiv understood in advance the need to prepare for a confrontation with “one of the largest armies in the world.”
On March 6, the acting head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, also indicated that Ukraine planned to launch an offensive operation in the Donbass and Crimea. The supporting documents were obtained during a Russian special operation.
