MOSCOW/KIEV, July 10. /TASS/: The United States have failed to fulfill some of agreements on Ukraine reached during a phone conversation between the leaders of Russia and the United States in 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin told US filmmaker Oliver Stone in the Revealing Ukraine documentary.
In the documentary, presented during the Taormina film festival on July 6, Stone asks Putin to comment on his phone conversation with then US President Barack Obama, which took place against the background of the 2014 mass rallies in Kiev, known as Maidan.
"As you know, Obama is not a president anymore, but there are still some things that we [do not comment]," Putin said. "Anyway, I can only say that the agreements reached during this phone conversation, were not fulfilled by the US side."
"I will confine myself to saying that and I will not elaborate," Putin added.
On November 21, 2013, a week ahead of the anticipated signing of the association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union at an Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius, the then Ukrainian government announced suspension of preparations for the signing.
It provoked mass riots in central Kiev that ultimately resulted in a three-month standoff, commonly known as ‘Maidan,’ on Kiev’s central Independence Square, or Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Protesters seized a number of administrative buildings and set up the so-called armed ‘self-defense’ forces, which plunged into open confrontation with law enforcement agencies. The protests peaked with a coup in which ex-President Viktor Yanukovich was toppled and fled Ukraine.
US election meddling
Speaking about Russian-US relations, Putin once again stressed that Moscow has never tried to influence domestic policies in the United States.
"I did not interfere then, I don’t want to interfere now and I’m not going to interfere in the future," he said.
The Russian leader added that incumbent President Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election because he had a better understanding of the voters’ moods and expectations.
"The United States is a huge country, with huge population and with its own problems and views of what is good and what is bad. They realized that in the past years - say, a decade - the wealth of the ruling class and the rich has grown rapidly, but at the same time nothing changed for the better for the middle class. Those who organized Trump’s election campaign and Trump himself understood this. And he made use of this," Putin said.
Putin also agreed to Oliver Stone’s suggestion that Ukraine’s ex-President Pyotr Poroshenko and his administration threw in their lot with Trump’s election rival Hillary Clinton.
"This is of no secret," Putin said. "They assumed that Clinton will win and were doing their best to demonstrate their loyalty to the future US administration, tried to create a favorable impression about themselves with the future president. That’s why they made tough comments about Trump and supported the Democrats by all means."
Russian-Ukrainian perspectives
When asked about the perspectives of Russian-Ukrainian relations, Putin described the current ties as "difficult," mostly as a result of the 2014 state coup in Ukraine and subsequent "propaganda by Ukraine’s incumbent authorities who blame Russia for all the tragic events that followed."
However, he said that friendly relations between the two nations will inevitably return.
"Rapprochement is inevitable. At least, creating normal, friendly and I would even say more than friendly - allied - relations is inevitable," Putin said.
New documentary
The Revealing Ukraine documentary was first revealed on July 6 at the Taormina Film Festival. It will premiere on Russia’s Rossiya-1 TV channel on July 19. It was made by Oliver Stone (executive producer and interviewer) and Igor Lopatenok (director). The film looks into the consequences of the Maidan events and features, among other officials, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk.
