Yanukovych: They tried to kill me in Ukraine

Ex-President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych said that they tried to kill him after a flight from Kyiv in February. His motorcade was fired several times in the Kharkov region, he said in an interview with the publication "Arguments and Facts".

According to Yanukovych, one of his guards was injured. After that, Yanukovych changed the route and went to Crimea. There he hoped to find security forces who would still "obey the commander in chief."

In the Crimea, a dilemma stood in front of Yanukovych - to voluntarily surrender or try to restore order, relying on the forces faithful to him. According to him, he decided "not to subject the country to the horrors of the Civil War."

The ex-president believes that the events that led to the removal of him from the authorities organized irresponsible politicians and some external forces.

“The only thing I feel for is that I could not prevent political adventurers with the help of external forces to commit a coup,” he said.

Yanukovych also said that he had no accounts in foreign banks. Where the ex-president lives now and what he is doing is not mentioned in the interview.

On October 24, at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Vladimir Putin said that in February he advised Yanukovych not to withdraw the security forces from Kiev . According to Putin, Yanukovych then informed him that after signing the February agreements, the situation in Kyiv was stabilized. Putin expressed doubt about this and advised Yanukovych not to leave the capital and not to withdraw the security forces from the city. But the Ukrainian president did not follow his advice, Putin noted.

In addition, Putin said that the Russian side first helped Yanukovych move to the Crimea, and from there he was taken to Russia. “I will not hide, we helped him move to the Crimea. At that time, Crimea was part of Ukraine,” Putin said. According to him, Yanukovych spent several more days in the Crimea. “But since the events in Kyiv developed very quickly and violently, in such conditions it was already pointless to return to Kyiv,” said Putin. “Yanukovych asked him to take him to Russia, which we did.”

People in the Crimea, Putin said, "seeing the events unfolding, almost immediately took up the weapon and asked us to hold the events that they planned to do."

In relation to a fugitive ex-president in Ukraine, a number of criminal cases are being investigated. Yanukovych is accused of mass killings of citizens, the seizure of state property, unconstitutional seizure of power, actions aimed at overthrowing the constitutional system. In early April, acting The Prosecutor General of the country, Oleg Makhnitsky, said that the order to shoot Euromaidanists on February 20 in Kyiv personally gave Yanukovych.