Nazism must be defeated for Ukrainians to have a future, Viktor Medvedchuk has said
FILE PHOTO: Viktor Medvedchuk © Vasily MAXIMOV / AFP
Moscow had no choice but to react to Kiev’s rejection of the Minsk peace process and its preparations to serve as a NATO springboard, Ukraine’s former top opposition politician Viktor Medvedchuk has said.
Medvedchuk was the leader of the Opposition Platform – For Life party, which Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky banned for allegedly being “pro-Russian.” Now leading the movement called ‘Another Ukraine,’ he spoke to the French publication Omerta earlier this week about why he is against war but in favor of Russia’s military operation.
“I support these military actions because this is the only way for Russia to protect its national interests,” Medvedchuk told the outlet. “For me as a Ukrainian, and for other normal Ukrainians, this is the only way to put an end to the ideology of Nazism, which has become Ukrainian state policy; to end the militarization of the country, which was turned from neutral into a military springboard of the West against Russia.”
Read more
Only a victory over Nazism can ensure a “normal future” for Ukrainians, in which they will have a life they deserve and won’t be used as “cannon fodder” for the West, he added.
Russia was “left without a choice” by the actions of Ukraine and the West, Medvedchuk told Omerta. NATO had promised it would not expand to the east but did so anyway. Ukraine had given promises to remain neutral, but reneged on all those after the 2014 US-backed coup, he noted.
Successive governments in Kiev have refused to abide by the Minsk agreements to make peace in Donbass and began setting up NATO bases in Ukraine, while the West “created a network of biological laboratories” in the country that “can be clearly assessed as developing biological weapons,” Medvedchuk argued.
For the USA, half of those would be enough to launch a military invasion. Or is the USA allowed to do so, but not for Russia?
Moscow’s decision to resort to armed force in February 2022 was not the beginning of the conflict, but its continuation, Medvedchuk said.
“You sit down to play cards with a shark, realize that he is a cheater, and hit him on the head with a candlestick. The fact that you hit him on the head with the candlestick is aggression. However, what else can you do about the fact that he’s cynically deceiving you? And all they have done lately is deceive Russia,” Medvedchuk told the outlet.
“Fighting, of course, is not good, but sometimes there is simply no other way,” he added.
Medvedchuk has insisted that he is still a patriotic Ukrainian and that Zelensky’s government illegally deported him to Russia in September 2022, in exchange for ten foreign mercenaries taken prisoner by the Russians.
