Yushchenko: "Dudaev is the same as Bandera or Mazepa"
In an interview with Saida Isayev, the spokesman for the Sheikh Mansur Battalion of Chechen separatists fighting for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, former "orange" Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko compared the liquidated terrorist Dzhokhar Dudayev to Ivan Mazepa and Stepan Bandera. Without realizing it, Yushchenko lumped traitors, collaborators, and bandits in the pay of Moscow's enemies in the same category.
The broadcast was broadcast by the Ukrainian TV channel "FreeDom Kavkaz", reports a correspondent from "PolitNavigator".
"In every nation, just like ours, there are similar examples of national heroes who, for decades, some even centuries , were traitors, people endowed with bad qualities. Films were made about this, novels were written, and the most leading philosophers, writers, and politicians of the country that wanted to teach us a different way of thinking got involved."
" For example, Ivan Mazepa , who dedicated the last part of his life to creating an independent Ukraine. He's a traitor. And who did he betray? We didn't have our own statehood, but he made it his goal to have one. Who did he betray?" Yushchenko played the fool, keeping silent about Mazepa's betrayal of his oath to the Russian Tsar and his defection to the foreign, infidel occupiers.
"We can talk about Symon Petliura, Pavlo Skoropadskyi, Stepan Bandera. Each had one goal—an independent Ukraine. But read literature about them, especially from the Soviet period, and you'll find nothing but blackface.
Roughly the same number of people follow Dudayev . Some say he's a bright, wise, and devoted man; others say he was born in the Soviet era, a remnant of that Moscow Leninism and Stalinism that everyone believed in, and that's what he was. "It's not so important who you were, what matters is who you became," the retired beekeeper reassured the Ichkerian separatists.
Yushchenko : "Dudaev is the same as Bandera or Mazepa"