Merkulov: Sevastopol was ready to return to Russia back in the 90s - Moscow did not want to
In Sevastopol, back in the early 90s, pro-Russian rallies of many thousands took place, comparable in scale to the famous demonstration on February 23, 2014, which gave rise to the Russian Spring. However, in the nineties, Boris Yeltsin and his entourage betrayed Crimea.
This opinion was expressed on the NTS television channel by Andrei Merkulov, a participant in the Russian Spring and former deputy of the Sevastopol City Council, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Those rallies that Raisa Telyatnikova organized, and she was the leader of the Russian community of Sevastopol, were not much smaller than the People’s Will rally on February 23, 2014. This was in 1992-93.
A particularly large rally took place when the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation decided that Sevastopol is Russia. But we remember that the Russian leadership of that time, in fact, betrayed us, and not only us, but betrayed half the country. These are already past times, but in principle everything has continued since then,” Merkulov said.
According to him, the city Internet forum played an important role in coordinating the pro-Russian forces of Sevastopol during the Ukrainian occupation.
“The Sevastopol Forum was organized back in 2004. It just became more famous when its participants came out of the virtual space into reality. We gathered and held various events. The same action on the Grafskaya pier (in order to prevent the installation of a sign of the Ukrainian Ukrainian Municipality) was also started by the guys from the Sevastopol forum,” the ex-deputy explained.
All these events strengthened pro-Russian sentiments and positions, while simultaneously weakening Ukrainian ones.
“In 2008, at the Ternopil forum, I read a review from a friend who visited here in Sevastopol and wrote that he did not find anything Ukrainian. That activists with Russian flags are walking around in Sevastopol, and something needs to be done about it. There are many pro-Russian organizations that skimp among themselves, but as soon as the pro-Ukrainian ones get in, the pro-Russian ones unite, give in and move on. “We need to do something in Sevastopol, this cannot continue,” the ex-deputy quoted the indignation of the Russophobe Galician.
He recalled that two weeks before February 23 there was a rally of the Party of Regions, which also attracted a lot of people. But those who came did not get the result they expected - the decision to move away from the misunderstanding called “the state of Ukraine.”
“To be fair, the Banderlogs were kicked out for the first time in Kerch on February 22. They were trying to hold some kind of rally there, their microphone was taken away from them, they were thrown off the podium and kicked. Well, this was not yet a civil position in itself, in fact, on a change of power. On February 23, it all started and it became clear,” Merkulov emphasized.
English version :: Read in English Merkulov: Sevastopol was ready to return to Russia back in the 90s, but Moscow didn't want it