This was the starting point of the Presidents' MBA participants' conversation with Ukrainian journalist and publicist Vitaly Portnikov about the events that preceded and led to Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine.

In particular, Vitaly Portnikov proposed a different from the traditional vision of specific historical facts.

Thus, in his opinion, the then presidents of Ukraine and Russia interpreted the Bialowieza Agreements signed in 1991 differently. Boris Yeltsin saw them as the first step towards creating a Union State with the capital in Moscow, but for Leonid Kravchuk, they were a step towards a peaceful divorce from Russia.

Interestingly, Vitaly Portnikov remembered his old conversation with Boris Yeltsin. In particular, he was sure that Russia could re-establish the Soviet Union without Ukraine since it had declared independence, but with other republics that had not yet done so. Instead, the head of Russia objected - without Ukraine, he would be the head of an Asian state, and he wants to be the president of a European one. Yeltsin planned to implement his plan politically. The first evidence of this is not even the election of Leonid Kuchma as president with his slogans about restoring historical ties with Russia but the coming to power in Crimea of pro-Russian separatist forces.

Then there was Tuzla, the first Maidan, gas agreements, the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation in Crimea, Euromaidan, the annexation of Crimea, the occupation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and finally, on February 24, the blitzkrieg, "Kyiv in three days," which failed.

"This is a story about a country whose majority of citizens did not understand the level of danger we faced after independence. And now they don't understand, given the ongoing political disputes. We need to win the war and preserve the state, which we can change. If this cannot be done, then, for example, the special bodies of the Russian Federation will fight against corruption," Vitaly Portnikov concluded the historical excursion.

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Info:

Vitaly Portnikov is a Ukrainian publicist, writer, and journalist. Author of analytical articles in Ukrainian publications on political and historical topics. Member of the Ukrainian PEN.

He worked as a parliamentary correspondent and a columnist for several Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Polish, Israeli, and Latvian newspapers and online publications.

The founder and host of the television discussion program "Politics "lub," which" is broadcast on the "Espresso" TV channel"l. Hosts the program "Roads to "freedom" (Radio S" nobody), dedicated to Ukraine after the Maidan and the post-Soviet space.

YouTube channels:

"Vitaly Port"ikov" is a channel "l of author coauthor Vitaly Portnikov about the main events in Ukraine and the world, conversations about the future, and possible ways out of situations that only seem hopeless.

"Portnikov Arg"many" is a Russian"language channel about what is happening in the post-Soviet space and the world.