it was just like that, what kind of audience would see it, and i told him to a foreigner, well, it was true, i was doing an interview for a foreign correspondent audience, it was like that in the first months of the interfax agency, which then worked exclusively for a foreign audience, huh , which did not see his material materials in the same. and here leonid kravchuk tells me: i believe that the position of algert sabrazavskyi is the only possible position in the situation in which the lithuanian communists found themselves and i fully share this position. i look at him, yes well, he knew what i meant, i already worked in young ukraine, i was a supporter of the movement and so on, and he, i tell him, i think we will work. and he says to me: and do not

doubt. it was an exchange of remarks, we didn't return to it again, then there was simply an extraordinary conversation, changes, restructuring, glasnost. well, karapchuk, as a party ideologue, he could talk about it for 5 hours, but it didn't matter anymore. i looked at him, everything became clear to me. and there was a moment between us when, i believe, it was decisive moment in... in the future and in my career as well, at the last congress of the cpsu. i don't remember if i talked about it, but i will tell you that we got to those moments. volodymyr ivashko accepted the position of deputy general secretary of the central committee of the cpsu without even informing his comrades on the central committee of the party. interesting. mykhailo horvachev met with him, said that it was necessary to stop ligachev, that he had him. such a commission and

accepted this nomination with great relief, but he hated them so much that he you when i met him in on the sidelines and he told me that he was davis gorbachev and that he would run for the position of deputy general secretary of the central committee of the cpsu. well , i was, how old was i, 24 or 23, and why didn't you join the communist party then, in order to destroy it from the inside, well, this is trolling, and we understand that there were people who tried even in that time to deal with the communists. common career, i don't want to name the names of these people, but they, well, they were, this is wildness, yes, because then, at the time when everyone was putting party tickets, there were those who hoped to invade the communists, well, first of all, i did not hope, secondly, i believed that, taking into account my political views, the fact that i communicated there with academician andriy sakhara, with vyacheslav chornovol, with mykhailo horoni, when they were leaving the camps, that it would be simply immoral, well, i... joined the komsomol when

i was in school, well, okay, but at an adult age they tried to drag me there to join the communist party, i told people with relief , who told me, why don't you write a statement to the party, i said, oh, i'm nothing i don't write, but you know, i have jewish origins, somehow the guilt calmed down, they didn't touch me anymore, because somehow even then it was believed that the communist party didn't need too many jews, well, thanks to this origin, it was possible to get away from all these ee e- er... pressure, because when a member of the politburo of the cpsu tells you why you don't write a statement to the party, it's somehow difficult to say, you know, i'm an anti-communist, i'd like you to be hanged here on some kind, well, i didn't want them mixed up , these were members of the politburo, who were not like that, not cannibals, but simply ordinary officials, but i definitely never wanted to be in the same organization with them, but it means that when the woman told me this, i mean in such youthful enthusiasm that i know something that no one knows, well, that is , the three of us know, ugh i ran to stanislav gurenko,

with whom i am on good terms, taking advantage of absolutely, i would say, diametrically opposed political views. and i tell him: stanislav ivanovich, and volodymyr antonovych will run for the position of deputy general secretary of the central committee of the cpsu. stanislav ivanovych says, he turned white, well, because he understood. this means when the head of the verkhovna rada of ukraine flees from ukraine a few months after the election, yes, and also on the day, in the days when the verkhovna rada of ukraine discussed the declaration of ukraine's sovereignty, the congress of the cpsu and this session took place at the same time, during the congress of the cpsu, the verkhovna rada of ukraine approved the declaration on the state sovereignty of ukraine in the absence of all party leaders, they were at the party congress, so i tell him: stanislav ivanovich.

and you will run for the post of chairman verkhovna rada? well, this is a logical question, and he tells me: "one has already run for office." and what happened? i believe that i should stay with the party, fulfill my duties as the first secretary of the central committee. you and i spoke after my election to the central committee. you were the first journalist i talked to. and i promised that i will lead the communist party of ukraine. i will not run for office. would you at least go to kyiv in such a situation? he says: how can i go to kyiv? congress of the communist party in moscow? how can i leave the convention? am i a communist? don't you understand you are not you understand you are not a communist. well, i think , well, if you're such an idiot, i apologize, then i went on, i went on and after a few minutes i met leonin makarovich, kravchuk, and i say, meleon makarovich, i have some interesting news for you, what news , makarovich says, i say, well, first of all, volodymyr

antonovych will be the deputy of the central committee of the cpsu, he is leaving ukraine, lenin makarovich did not turn white, but turned red, i would say from enthusiasm. so certain, i tell him, you know, such an unfortunate situation, he says, yes it's an unfortunate situation for the party, he was second in command at the time, it's a problem, and you know, i say leonid makarovich, and stanislav ivanovich gurenko will not run for the post of chairman of the verkhovna rada of ukraine, he tells me, how do you know, they didn't talk, they had such a relationship, they did not communicate. by the way, the first and second did not communicate, there was almost no communication, how do you know, well, i saw him a few minutes ago, i asked if he would go to kyiv, or if he would stay in the swamps, so this is his decision, he wants to stay the party, he is a communist, vitaliy, you are not a communist, you do not understand, the whole

ballana begins, well, you are not a communist, i say, lenin mikayovich, maybe you will go to kyiv, to kyiv, says leonid makarovich, you are not a communist, vitaliy, as a communist can leave the congress of the party, well, i left and ran away , unlike stanislav ivanovich, who told me everything, correctly and stayed at the congress, leonid makarovych, i think, flew to kyiv the very next day, and was elected chairman of the verkhovna rada of ukraine, and if stanislav gurenko was elected chairman of the verkhovna rada ukraine, imagine this situation on august 24 , 1991, with your head in the chair. of the verkhovna rada of ukraine, not leonid koravchuk, but stanislav gorenko. i am not sure that we would have adopted the act of independence, that it would have appeared at all. and there would be a confrontation, there would be a struggle. ugh. moscow would try to move gurenko. yeltsin would hardly want gurenko to remain at the head of ukraine, because he

would believe that gurenko would claim some higher positions in moscow. that is , anything could be there. and this day, when i am between ran with three of them. to find out how it ends, and i hope i gave leonid makarovich the right direction, yes, the vector of movement, i think it was just star time, but in any case it was you who described very specific manifestations of what is called a political miracle, such was the political will or sovereign will of the ukrainian people, it is extremely important, yes, but a lot of things could depend on some personnel decisions, personnel appointments, well, look what an illustration, mykhailo gorbachev. demanded from the first secretaries of the central committee of the union party republic, that they run for the position of president or chairman of the verkhovna rada and leave the positions of the first secretaries of the central committee of the communist party of the union, how many people do you think have fulfilled this assignment of his? no one, no,

one, volodymyr evashko, ugh, he was the first central committee member, he was elected chairman of the verkhovna rada, and he resigned as the first strongman of the central committee, i generally thought that this was complete apparatus idiocy, nazarbayev, karimov. niyazov, everyone remained in their positions as party leaders, because there was real power, vertical, and it is difficult gave this vertical to gurenko, and as a result , everything was like this, and look, here are the first elections, the second elections and so on, for example, the change of a whole day, yes, well, we can talk for a long time about the day of the 91st year, in general about the day kravchuk, about the resignation of kravchuk, but the key story, when kuchma appeared, i would also like to just say that in the present, well... day, the day of independence, so kuchma was essentially one of the creators of what was called the ukrainian sovereign state bureaucratic apparatus , that is, he passed the law on civil service, he began to write out the so-called ranks to officials, he began to build, good, bad, for his own

benefit and so on, well, but special services, that is , he tried to create his own ukrainian kazakhstan, this is how we will formulate this matter, where he succeeded to the end, we could... and we don't understand, but maybe, well, it was kuchma himself who managed to stop the russian appetite, of course, not him, but horbulin, marchuk and so on, that is, stop it. the russian creeping expansion to the south, primarily about crimea, but not only about crimea, i.e. it somehow managed to block this story, here is kuchma, he is still alive, yes, here he is dark, angel, light, angel, or just a humble director, burdened with colossal powers, colossal responsibility, covered by agents, for example, well, if we are talking about the old dekachan, about the old derkach and so on, my father, that he was an agent, working as a deputy of the verkhovna rada and so on and so on, that is, he was taxed, but he

tried to build, perhaps autocratic, but ukraine, so he may have hoped to rule forever until 2000 30- th year, for example, i am not sure he hoped to rule forever to be honest but he was going to continue his reign there for sure at some point i can we have that's not a two minute answer. we will have a break in literally two minutes, but before this break i have to say that i really followed the appearance of leonid kuchma, because i met leonid kuchma, it seems, there a couple of days after leonid kuchma was appointed prime minister of ukraine, and here it must be said that leonid kuchmo was needed by leonid kravchuk simply because leonid kravchuk precisely because he was a party ideologue, he did not understand anything about the economy at all, but like gorbachev, well, he did not... understand the economy at all, and he, the only thing he understood at the time of kuchma's appointment

was that the first prime minister of already independent ukraine, vytold fokin, i don't understand anything about the new economy either, and by the way, when vytold fokin appeared again on the political arena , somehow there was grandfather masha fokin, that's right, that's right, a member of this delegation in at the negotiations, at the negotiations in minsk we saw that he was a completely soviet person who remained soviet, imagine what he was like in 1900 there in the years 91-93, he was such a soviet official-intellectual who liked to read books and talk about culture, but unfortunately, he had absolutely no knowledge of the economy as such, that is, the modern economy, the gaidar-chubais economy, let’s say, with which it was necessary to coexist, and leonid kravchuk at some point came to the conclusion that he needed someone capable of organizing a reformist... which will not yield russian ambitions, because there was a belligerence that russia would capture the ukrainian

economy in schen, we will now take a break for a few minutes, then we will continue about kuchma.

we continue the saturday polyclub on the espresso tv channel atsin borkovsky vitaly portnikov , we talk about the foundation, the foundations of our ukrainian independence in various political and not only political dimensions, an extremely informative conversation, just a couple of minutes ago vitaliy said: well, literally secrets, yes, that is, well, that means, kuchma became prime minister, from here also the interesting moment when kravchuk appointed him prime minister, it was implied that kuchma would become yegor gaidar's partner, and the first, and kuchma knew about it, and he was ready, of course, gaidar knew about it, gaidar, i would say, was very, very skeptical of vitol dafukin, i once met with. with the heads of the administration of the president of russia sergei filatov and vitold fokin at vnukova-2 airport. and gaidar there

said so skeptically that the current leaders of ukraine are not capable of conducting any real reforms. and now you need someone with whom you can talk about reforms. they could not talk about reforms with fokin. fokin is the former head of the state plan of the ukrainian ssr. for gaidar, this was already a characteristic. he simply understood that this person was not from the post-soviet soviet economy. and kuchva is the director of the plant. a completely different person, but what actually happened: kuchma was supposed to become yegor gaidar's partner, but he became viktor chornomerdan's partner, because during this time gaidar left the same, this director, this director, this married to a russian woman, this one married to a ukrainian woman, that is, in fact, such soviet directors, this one respects this one, this one respects that one,

they quickly got along, chornomyrdin opened kuchma's door to boris yeltsin. and there, too , everything was clear, yeltsin really could withstand a long feast. leonid kravchut was a complete stranger to him. that's all that yeltsin loved, hunting, vodka, sauna, that's all, well, kravchuk was different, he was a party ideologue, he could have been alexander yakovlev's partner there, let's say gorbachev's adviser on kuchma and yeltsin could afford to solve global issues in this way, yes. it was very important to be able to drink as much as the host drinks and not, not to fall face down under the table, and by the way, i have to say that i am not the prime minister of ukraine, but of course a journalist, i trained because when i interviewed islam karimov, let's say, it was a bottle of cognac for one person, and

you can imagine that you are sitting across from the president of the country and you, the problem here is not that you you will fall for... and the problem is that you can say something, which you will later regret for years, if you manage to regret it, that is , it was such control, which, by the way, weaned me from alcohol, because i stopped drinking damn, it was just such a psychological shock that after all these interviews i haven't used alcohol for years after that, because i know that it doesn't work on me, i'm just the appearance of alcohol, i have to be like a prick' this one... to build some kind of sovereign ukraine, which from their point of view simply led them around finger, because he began to introduce his own currency, build his own army, came out better than, say, leonid kravchuk, who started there

with the unified command of the cis, did a lot of things, what, what they did not agree on in biloveski, that is, he began to build a real state , they didn't want that, neither yeltsin nor chornomyrdan, they wanted this union of countries, and that's why, by and large, they decided to support leonid kuchma, when it was 1994, kuchma was at that moment the head of the ukrainian union of entrepreneurs and industrialists, kravchuk and did not find a prime minister who could be a reformer, then the head of the ukrainian government was vitaly masol, the last prime minister. kravchuk thought large-scale, economically, he had kuchma, it was an absolute disaster, if there was a whole, i would say, wagon of reformers, but why wasn’t there a force scenario, well, why wasn’t there a force scenario, so we understand

from what side, on the part of the russians, why didn't they do what they did, for example, against ... georgia, we understand that they saw a prospect in the fact that it is possible to negotiate with those pro-communist or neo-communist elites, well, because kuchma was the boss there , it was easier to negotiate with him, were they not ready to fight with such a large system, well, it’s one thing, like georgia, it’s smaller there, it’s another thing to support civil wars in central asia , and the second one is moldova with transnistria, yes, and the second case is a power from. and why didn't they prepare, they were preparing, in georgia, they didn't fight with georgia, they fought for control over abkhazia, south ossetia, in ukraine needed crimea and the black sea fleet and they were preparing, the election of mishkov was a preparation for a power scenario, so myshkov appointed yevhen saburov, a russian citizen , as prime minister of crimea, mishkov appointed

viktor minin, a russian citizen, a person connected to the special services. apparently , the head of the administration of the president of crimea is focused on the power scenario. i have known viktor vinin since 1998. he was a people's deputy of the ussr from the komsomol. he had nothing to do with ukraine and crimea. therefore, when i saw him in the administration of the president of crimea, i immediately understood what was going on. that is, they were preparing this scenario of the secession of crimea, what happened in 2000 14 years ago. in 1992, but did not go for it, because they decided that they were getting ukraine, they acted in parallel, on the one hand they. were preparing the secession of crimea, on the other hand, they were preparing the overthrow of leonid kravchuk. kravchuk went to early presidential and parliamentary elections. if he won the presidential election, i think so

after these elections, the secession of crimea would take place. but he lost the election. i saw with my own eyes a scene that was quite telling for me. on the day when it became known that kravchuk lost the presidential election of ukraine. i was at a reception that the then french ambassador in kyiv gave in a ukrainian house, and it was supposed to be a reception that, from the point of view of kryvchuk's team, celebrated his re-election for a second term, but it turned out that it was an acceptance of kravchuk's defeat, and that acceptance for the first time actually in an official capacity will come to the entourage of the new ukrainian president leonid kuchna, i.e. dmytro tabachnyk. and there was another one of his sidekicks, everyone understood that dmytro tabachenko became almost the second person of ukraine in this situation, but strangely enough, viktor

minin, the head of president mishkov's administration, was at this reception, so viktor minin communicated with dmytro tabachnyk as a subordinate , since i knew both of them, yeah, and viktor minen was generally mine, let's say, not bad then. friend, i was the first journalist who even interviewed people's deputy sovietsky from him union, such things are not forgotten, as you understand, when you are a young person, minin did not hide from me that he absolutely, that is , someone there, conditionally speaking, i say conditionally, well , but someone there minin was already ready to cut problems in the right who, the ukrainian president, cut kuchma's hand so naturally, of course, i was there at the presentation of kuchma's certificate of the president of ukraine, minin was the main figure of the vision there. and i will also remind you of the people who were in kuchma's headquarters at that time, this is kostyantyn zatulin, ugh, the head of the institute cis of ukraine, people's deputy of the russian

federation, this is vyacheslav yegrunov, also a supporter of such an imperial democratic russia, people's deputy of the russian federation, kuchma's biggest ally among russian politicians besides chornomiroval of the russian union of entrepreneurs and industrialists. also a person connected with the special services, the former commandant of nagorno-karabakh, and these people were quite serious about it, they were about the idea of ​​restoring the joint industrial complex of ukraine and russia in this, it was kuchma's idea and volskyi, and when i wrote an article both in moscow and in kyiv that this is impossible, because the ties are broken, because the market economy, because it simply cannot happen anymore, then kuchma and volskyi made statements, who are there... that i am undermining the stability and friendship of two peoples, i remember it well, it was a joint conference dedicated to my humble person, that is

the key issue, that is, they having their appointed people to the highest political elite, who had a direct influence on the first persons of the state, and this applies not only to ukraine, but to ours environment, that is, we are talking about belarus, and ultimately we are talking about russia, and lukashenko on the day that kuchma also won the elections, so otlyuch. a new story, why did they not start one or another preparatory process that would end, for example, with the introduction of russian invaders, for example, into one or another populated areas, or crimea, or the deployment of one or another force, well, look, they sincerely believed that that he and kuchma would agree on everything, and that's why they started preparing this big contract. kuchma, when he entered the office of the president of ukraine, he was, and he is, he is a very intelligent person, i would say so. you are dangerous, i would never, i would not wish anyone to be an enemy of leonid kuchma, from the point of view of his general reaction to the fact that he, how he generally

treats his enemies, but very intelligent, shrewd, shrewd, well at the end of the day it the director of a huge defense factory, he has a manner, it still exists, how to say, pretending that he is a simpleton, ugh, but he has never been one in his life, he just has success or failure in different periods of his life. played this one the favorite ukrainian manner is political fooling around and everyone thought very often that it was just a coin, i remember that when leonid kuchma first came to this hotel of the former central committee of the cpsu in moscow, as the prime minister of ukraine, and he came and stood this group of journalists who run to him with a microphone, and then lenich looks at them and says: listen, where is your toilet here, says lerin danylovych, and everyone tells me, oh, you have such a prime minister. and i already talked to him, i know that he is not such a prime minister, i just understand that he didn't want to answer any question and he decided to show them that he is like that, well i'm like that, i'm like that, he's not like that, it's great.

the problem of all people who communicated with kuchma is to think that he is like that, he is not like that, and this, by the way, is the problem of tabachnyk, to think that he is like that, but then, in addition to tabachnyk, there was also medvedchuk, yes, but still kuchmi somehow managed to escape from complete control, but i, i do not know whether he wanted to appoint tobacconists, medvedchuks and so on, which tobacconists he wanted to appoint, because he believed that this will be a loyal person to him, but was he imposed on him, and this was part of his agreement with moscow, well... during the presidential campaign, his advertisement was broadcast on soviet television, it was expensive, expensive, not from the point of view of money, but from the point of view because of the fact that our compatriots with you were watching moscow television, not ukrainian at that time, but one way or another it was really him, but he immediately turned to gorbulin, and gorbulin was one of the key players from the point of view of preventing the seizure of crimea, then, it was gorbul and marchuk, of course, he... started

to create balance sheets, tabachnik, razumkov, horbulin, tabachnik eventually left these balance sheets. he simply kicked out all the moscow mob company, all these shelters, they got nothing, and in the end, in a few years , he had such a yeltsin regime, and i think it would have worked that way, because this regime, it was based on on his personal relations with yeltsin and chornomyrdin, but in 1999 a disaster occurred. ugh, chornomyrdan lost power, his best friend yeltsin left at the end of 1999 politician, and kuchma had to work with putin for the last four years, and putin hated him, hated him, because kuchma was the embodiment of this yeltsenism for him, he saw that kuchma was building ukraine absolutely for

himself. and not for him, but for putin, ukraine was a mistake that kuchma built such a system in which you can't even get into crimea, because there is a vertical, uh, but in fact an authoritarian vertical, he tried to push, you remember, yes, yes, and putin, as soon as he became president, he began to act against kuchma through the means of his favorites special operations, it's chain mail, it's the promotion of all these things that we... happened in moscow after melnichenko's films, and they really began to impose medvedchuk on him, as a person who can be an intermediary between him and the kremlin there, because he himself can't mean by them, well, they wanted to appoint the same medvedchuk as kuchma's successor, and medvedchuk too, and kuchma understood it, kuchma felt it, and so he did, well, he tried to nullify, to nullify medvedchuk's influence

on himself. i think he was trying to use medvedchuk and medvedchuk's ambitions precisely the model of the parliamentary-presidential republic, the idea was very simple: if vitsya becomes my heir, and i will have nothing to catch, and you will have nothing to catch, and by the way, this is what happened when president yanukovych became president in the 10th year, which was due to medvedchuk's influence, nothing, that is why we need a parliamentary presidential republic, we will share the influences there, and even if he becomes president, we will isolate him. let's say, i sneeze, some of my people will be the prime minister, you will be, uh, the speaker of the parliament, he there will be a queen of donetsk, that was the idea, and medvedchuk tried to explain this idea to vladimir putin and dmitry medvedev in the fourth year of 2000, and they sent him, he spoke on his own behalf, on behalf of kuchma, they agreed with kuchma on this, this there was

a joint approach, but... they said that they did not need any parliamentary, presidential republic, that yanukovych should simply become kuchma's heir, because they knew that yanukovych was a much more controllable figure for them, and then a group of deputies did not voted for the project of a parliamentary-presidential republic, a group of deputies from yanukovych, our ukraine yushchenko supported this project, but there were several people among them, if you look at all these surnames, you can see that most of them are now in the city of heroes, moscow. andriy derkach, he voted against, being a representative of the entire elite of ostia already, that is , putin, medvedev and yanukovych failed the kuchma idea of ​​a parliamentary presidential republic, we returned to it only as a result of the first maidan, so that kuchma in in this regard, he was always in such a situation of struggle with putin. for his own

self-preservation.