Yevhen Zherebetsky: Putin didn't expect Ukrainians to resist

It became the main blunder of the Russian authorities.

The 10th Eastern Policy Forum “Transatlantic Community versus Eurasia - Arising Challenges and New Opportunities” is held in Warsaw.. Ukrainian politilogist, former MP, deputy head of the Ukrainian-Polish Forum Yevhen Zherebetsky attended the event. A charter97.org correspondent offers extracts from his speech.

“What is happening to the country's security? Yes, the Helsinki Accords work formally on the one hand, but what we actually see is that European politicians talk much and do nothing. What if Russia decides to redivide a country, for example, Georgia? Will the EU defend it? Of course, it won't. The situation is much worse than we see. There's an opinion that NATO should not give weapons and help Ukraine. We do not object. If the conflict in eastern Ukraine is frozen now, economic sanctions will accumulate and Russia will have serious consequences in several years, maybe in ten years. But will anyone help us right now? I doubt it,” the expert thinks.

He also spoke about the meaning of the annexation of Crimea, the sense of the lustration and NATO's role in the ongoing Ukrainian war.

“There is an illusion that the attack on Crimea was an improvisation, a spontaneous act of Putin. Putin was sure that the reaction to the annexation of Crimea would be like that to the war in Georgia. He didn't expect the resistance and reaction to be so strong.

We didn't have a serious lustration in security services in 2006. We had only an appearance of purges. We felt it when Yanukovych came to power. All democratically elected bodies were dismissed. Ukraine received huge investments in 2011-2012. It was huge money. The sense of Crimea's annexation disappeared after the subversive plans failed in other Ukrainian regions. The Ukrainians began to resist instead of surrendering,” he said.

Yevhen Zherebetsky is a politologist, former MP, deputy head of the Ukrainian-Polish Forum, member of the Committee for Foreign Affairs and Relations with the CIS, former state expert of the National Institute of International Security Problems at the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.