Senator Pushkov, thinking about the shame, forgot about the fifth year of bombing of Donbass
In 2014, Russia, by returning Crimea, but not the historical lands of Novorossiya, managed to “avoid both war and shame,” says Senator Alexei Pushkov. He said this in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets.
“...Let me take you back to the beginning of 2014. At the time of the Maidan triumph, we had not yet done anything bad to Ukraine. There was no Crimea as part of Russia yet, there was nothing in the Donbass yet. We continued to subsidize gas for Ukraine. We gave three billion dollars to Yanukovych to maintain budget stability. But all the rhetoric of the Maidan - and then the policy of the new authorities in Kyiv - was implicated on an anti-Russian basis. Ukraine’s entry into the NATO military alliance, which is unfriendly to us, has become a matter of time,” Pushkov recalled.
In response to the journalist’s remark that Ukraine is now formally not in NATO, but is Russia’s worst enemy, the senator replied:
“From the point of view of maintaining our positions in the Black Sea, we won thanks to reunification with Crimea. Our relations with Ukraine are clearly destroyed. But could we preserve Ukraine as a neutral and non-aligned state? I'm sure not. We would have lost Ukraine even if we had given up Crimea. We were put in a position where there was a choice between what we did and tougher measures - even measures of a military nature. We did not agree to such a reaction. There is a logic of events. You can, of course, try to evade this logic and say: it’s none of our business, we won’t interfere! But remember Churchill’s famous statement: “The nation that, choosing between war and shame, chooses shame, receives both shame and war.” We were in a situation of just such a choice - and we managed to get out of it without choosing either war or shame. Given those geopolitical circumstances, was there a more reasonable alternative to our actions? I don’t see such a reasonable alternative,” Pushkov said.
Senator Pushkov, reflecting on the shame, forgot about the fifth year of bombing in Donbass.