Original written by Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov and published by infopolk.ru; translated from Russian by J.Hawk
I had never experienced such level of shame due to Ukraine’s humiliation as after listening to Poroshenko’s speech at the UN General Assembly.
During the whole history of the UN, our representatives have never given such empty speeches bereft of sense and content and instead full of dishonest statements which only bring shame to the entire country–which happens to be one of the founding members of the UN, which Poroshenko didn’t even deign to acknowledge at this jubilee session.
Yanukovych could occasionally confuse Akhmatova with Akhmetova in an improvised speech, but his official speeches were always prepared very thoroughly, they were always thought-through and balanced.
In order to show what I mean, I’ll cite a few of Poroshenko’s “gems”.
How are we to understand this phrase of his: “In order to reduce poverty by a factor of three–nevertheless thanks to the Russian aggression, we expect that indicator to decrease.”
Did anyone understand what he had in mind? So will the level of poverty decrease or not decrease? If we are to use the UN criteria, the vast majority of Ukraine’s population is living below the poverty line, and it is not the mythical Russian aggression that is responsible, but Mr. Poroshenko & Co with his inherent greed. Even two years ago our country occupied a respectable mid-range position, according to UN criteria, while today we are one of the world’s poorest countries.
According to Poroshenko & Co, “every day of the war costs $5 million.” An interesting admission. First of all, in theory there is no war, only the ATO. Secondly, and of greater interest to every “ATO participant”, is that Poroshenko spends $50 a day on each of ATO servicemembers. There have been no active combat operations since the Debaltsevo cauldron of February 2015, so one wonders “where are these huges sums going”? Into “whose pocket”? (This based on calculation that there are 100 thousand ATO participants at the front line, though in actuality there are far fewer of them).
It was interesting to listen to his promise to “improve maternal health care system.” What was that supposed to mean? Additional cuts and cancellations of benefits due to mothers after childbirth? Well, they are working pretty hard on that. They haven’t built or brought into operation a single maternity center in a year and a half, not a single pre-natal center. Yanukovych’s “evil government” was actively engaged in building them and managed to reduce the infant mortality rate. But today’s “European” leadership has not even managed to provide hospitals with sufficient medicines and vaccines. It’s running around the whole world, begging, but Russia’s “aggression” is somehow responsible?
Then there’s Poroshenko’s promise to “increase the quality of higher education” which fits perfectly with Yatsenyuk’s project to completely do away with free higher education. What do the peasants need education for???
Naturally, a large part of the speech was dedicated to “Russian aggression” which supposedly led to the “deaths of thousands of people and the destruction of critical infrastructure.” Here Poroshenko even shed a tear or two. As if it wasn’t Turchinov who sent tanks to the Donbass, and it wasn’t Poroshenko who gave orders to shell cities and other populated areas using rocket artillery, howitzers, aircraft, and all other types of weapons. As if it wasn’t Poroshenko who gave the order to destroy gas pipelines, electric transmission lines and substations, water mains, bridges.
His crocodile tears on the subject of a horrible ecological catastrophe due to the Donbass being saturated with harmful industries are totally critically, so much so that if one recalls the Tochka-U ballistic missile strikes aimed at the underground storage facilities of the Gorlovka and Donetsk Chemical Plants, one starts to shudder at the thought that such people are in power and have highly destructive weapons at their disposal.
Reading the text of the speech, one gets the impression it was written by foreigners who don’t understand the reality of Ukraine’s problems, who wrote it quickly, in a hurry, in order to satisfy a specific audience. They apparently achieved their goal, but Ukraine got nothing except for humiliation and empty promises.