“Poroshenko is knocking out Putin” – this is how the influential Polish Gazeta Wyborcza introduced the article of the fifth President of Ukraine, entitled “Putin’s article is not about history. This is a political manifesto with threats to neighbours.”
“In the opinion of any normal person, it is dangerous and strange to build politics on the events of a thousand years ago, and even more so on their tendentious interpretation, when well-known historical facts are seasoned with fakes of modern propaganda,” Petro Poroshenko said.
“We Ukrainians do not claim Novgorod just because the Ukrainian ruler Volodymyr was the prince of Novgorod for several years. And we do not even encroach on Moscow as our former backwoods’ province on the grounds that it was founded by Yuri Dolgoruky, Prince of Kiev. After all, Charlemagne was the emperor of the ancestors of modern Germans and French, but no conscious politician thinks of declaring them one people, let alone unite them into a single state,” he added.
“Putin denies not only the right of Ukrainians to freedom and independence. Putin wants to secure Moscow’s veto in Europe, to divide it again into spheres of influence. History is distorted as no more than a screen for aggressive policy, to define the ‘living space’ for today’s Russia,” said the fifth President of Ukraine.
The leader of European Solidarity also stressed that the Kremlin is currently waging a hybrid war against democratic values around the world.
According to him, this article by Putin perfectly fits into the traditional rhetoric of the Russian president about the alleged military threat to Russia and is an excuse for military manoeuvres on the border with Ukraine, building a military machine, and the total mobilization of Russian society.
“Putin’s cunning trick is to reduce everything to a military confrontation, because only in a fortress surrounded on all sides does Russia feel confident,” Petro Poroshenko said.
He also stressed that Ukrainians have long since determined their own identity and have no problems with this issue. “We, Ukrainians, have no problems with our own identity. We don’t give a damn, what Putin thinks about it,” the fifth President of Ukraine emphasized.