Interview by Vestnik Kavkaza
The ceasefire regime in Ukraine started on Sunday. Yesterday, leaders of the Normandy Quartet discussed the difficult situation near Debaltsevo by telephone, as well as the role of the OSCE mission in the process of monitoring the ceasefire regime. The first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, Vladimir Nikitin, told Vestnik Kavkaza about his view on the Minsk agreements, the situation in Ukraine and the prospects of cooperation between Russia and the South Caucasus states.
- Do you think Kiev is ready to fulfil the agreements which were achieved by Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Petro Poroshenko?
- Personally, I have no illusions. The militias have been deceived several times. Ukraine continued to bomb peaceful towns, and I would not like this to happen once again, Russia is stopping the militia with its influence, who right now are gaining victory, and only because of this has the opportunity been raised for the Normandy Quartet to meet again. Russia will make the militias stop the war, and the US Army will re-arm Ukraine and steal victory from the militia. This is the worst case.
I believe that the West cannot be trusted fully. We need to keep our powder dry, although, of course, as the Russian proverb says, a bad peace is better than a good war.
We, of course, will continue to support the Russian world, because we believe that the aggressor is not Russia, but the United States, the EU and the whole Western civilization that has broken the boundaries of Russian civilization in the world. And these boundaries pass through the territory of Ukraine. And divide it into a Uniate west and an Orthodox East.
The Orthodox East, always in arms, will defend their sacred right to speak and think in their native Russian language and act in Russian. We don't need foreign lands, but we also must force an aggressive neighbor to peace.
The optimal solution to this problem was raised before, when the Communist Party of Ukraine proposed holding a referendum about the territorial structure of Ukraine, and proposed creating a federal structure. That would preserve the sovereignty of Ukraine, and the rights of the people belonging to different civilizations - the West and the Russian and Eurasian world would be satisfied. Now, after what the Ukro-fascists did to the people of New Russia, the desire to live together has drastically decreased. Therefore, in the future, I think the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics and other regions of New Russia will be independent.
- What do you think about the relations between Russia and the South Caucasus countries?
- Russia is providing a multi-vector policy, building relations with Turkey, providing mutually beneficial interests. We don’t stand against normalization of relations with Georgia. We proposed to them construction of a railway which would connect Abkhazia, Georgia and Armenia. Russia should stay itself. It shouldn’t copy the Western model. It should show its neighbors that we will fulfil the idea of our St. Prince Alexander Nevsky, who said: “Learn how to live in peace with people of different nationalities, but don’t dishonor yourself.” And his second important vow was: “Don’t break foreign borders.”
But if a neighbor is aggressive, we should force him to peace. We demonstrated this when Georgia attacked peacemakers and our brotherly peoples of Ossetia. We forced them to peace and gave them an opportunity to reconsider relations with Russia. The same thing applies to Ukraine. We don’t need foreign lands, but we won’t stand for aggressors on our borders. Everybody has the right to follow their religion in their region. But we won’t stand foreign rules in our region.
- What do you think about relations between Russia and Azerbaijan? Are there any opportunities for a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?
- Russia's relations with Azerbaijan are friendly. This is confirmed by the fact that our delegations at PACE are voting together against US expansion. Recently, the leader of the Communist faction in the State Duma visited Azerbaijan and met with President Aliyev. Prior to this, all our committee members had also gone there and had a half hour conversation with the leader of Azerbaijan. We concluded that Azerbaijan is one of those countries in the former Soviet Union where there is no rabid Russophobia, where there is a desire for people of all nationalities to live in peace.
We hope that Azerbaijan will be a country to become part of the Eurasian Economic Union in the future. And I know that the President of the Russian Federation, and the head of the State Duma, Sergei Naryshkin, are now taking steps to ensure that the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan find the best way to begin resolving the problem which causes a lot of pain to both countries. I think eventually they will find a solution.
