Leonid Kuchma’s visit to Russia: a highly controversial trip

The second president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, who represents our country at the Minsk talks, visited Yekaterinburg on November 25, the media reported quoting his spokeswoman Darka Olifer. “Kuchma is in Yekaterinburg now,” she told Apostrof, “where he will take part in the opening ceremony of the Yeltsin Center.”

The event’s attendees included Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. There was no mention of Kuchma’s meeting with the Russian president. They were joined at the celebration by former head of the Moldovan state Petru Lucinschi and the last leader of the Latvian SSR Anatoly Gorbunov. The Russian side said that many leaders of European states who maintained ties with Yeltsin once were unable to come to Russia.

It should be noted that the position of the Ukrainian representative regarding the relations with the aggressor nation looks unclear if he dares take part in the celebrations on the occupiers’ home soil. Very revealing is social networks’ indignant response to this news. We were unable to obtain any official explanations concerning the situation from the government of Ukraine.

Let us recall that Kuchma has been involved in negotiations with the aggressor since June 2014. In September 2014 and February 2015, the so-called Minsk agreements were signed, dealing with the peaceful settlement of the conflict in the Donbas. Russia, which attacked our country in February past year, takes pains to channel the negotiations into a direct dialog between the government of Ukraine and the terrorists, thus proving that the war in eastern Ukraine is a purely internal conflict.