Ukraine’s ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has made an appearance on the BBC Hardtalk show hosted by Stephen Sackur.
Yatsenyuk, who left the prime minister office nearly a year ago in April 2016 and was replaced by Volodymyr Groysman, followed other top Ukrainian politicians who appeared on Hardtalk in recent years, namely President Petro Poroshenko, ex-Odesa governor Mikheil Saakashvili and Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko.
The interview focused on the blockade of the trade between Kyiv and the territories occupied by Russian-separatist forces, the possible effect of Donald Trump’s presidency on Ukraine, and the Minsk peace deal that was supposed to stop the war in the eastern part of Ukraine – but doesn’t seem to work.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s BBC Hardtalk interview. (BBC)
Yatsenyuk isn’t a fan of the blockade of trade between Kyiv and the occupied part of Donbas which activists have maintained since late January.
Yatsenyuk approves of “critical import from self-proclaimed republics,” which includes coal and iron ore that Ukrainian businesses and power plants need. He stressed that the companies that operate in the Donbas and transport the commodities from it are registered and pay taxes in Ukraine.
“We never paid a penny to so-called self-proclaimed republics,” Yatsenyuk said.
Yatsenyuk is critical about the role of the blockade. He called the Ukrainian politicians supporting it “lunatics who don’t care about the country” to which Sackur sarcastically noted that one of the supporters of the blockade, Yatsenyuk’s former political ally Yulia Tymoshenko, boasts a rating of 20 percent, while Yatsenyuk’s own party People’s Front has 2-percent support.
“Are you calling her a lunatic?” Sackur asked.
To that, Yatsenyuk noted that populists are on the rise across the world, hinting that Tymoshenko was one of them.
“Some politicians want to misuse this (blockade),” Yatsenyuk went on. “They talk to the people what people want to listen to, but will never deliver their promises.”
From populism, the conversation turned to President Trump, whose ties with Russia are alarming many in Ukraine.
Yatsenyuk recalled the Feb. 15 tweet in which Trump said that “Crimea was taken by Russia,” seemingly condemning the annexation.
Even though the main message of the tweet was that ex-President Barack Obama allowed it and was “weak,” Yatsenyuk sees it as an improvement between Ukraine and the U.S. He thinks that Trump “changed his mind” about Ukraine and Russia.
“A few months ago I was concerned that Russia might win,” Yatsenyuk went on. “But today we understand that nobody is considering to lift the sanctions. Sanctions will be in place. And this is a big win.”
As for the Minsk agreement, a failing peace deal made in early 2015 that aimed to reach a ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine, Yatsenyuk said that Ukraine did everything to fulfill it – but Russia didn’t.
“We were whiter than white in implementing the Minsk deal,” Yatsenyuk said. “We cannot have any compromise over territorial integrity and sovereignty of my country. The only solution that’s on the table — Russia should get out of Ukraine.”
Anyway, it was Russia who started the war, Yatsenyuk said, and hence, he thinks, Russia poses a threat to Ukraine, to Britain, to NATO and to everyone who “stand by the values of democracy and freedom.”
Yatsenyuk added that he saw Russian President Vladimir Putin as a man who “wants to rule the world” and poses a threat not only to Ukraine, but to NATO and the U.K.
“But we are prepared to fight like hell for our country and we are prepared to implement Minsk deal the way it is written,” Yatsenyuk said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected].
