MP Pushkov: Rada election outcome demonstrates presence of neo-Nazism threat in Ukraine
MOSCOW. Oct 27 (Interfax) - The standing of Ukrainian nationalist parties in the Sunday election cannot be seen as their defeat, State Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Alexei Pushkov said.
"The West is pretending that ultra-nationalists in Ukraine have practically suffered a defeat but this is not so," Pushkov told Interfax on Monday, speaking of the October 26 elections of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada.
"A sum of ballots cast for the Lyashko and Tyahnybok parties and the Right Sector nears 15%, there are the ballots cast for quasi-fascist or ultra nationalist parties of Ukraine," he pointed out.
In the opinion of the committee head, 15% is a rather large number of votes, which gives a reason to be worried about this phenomenon. "But the United States wants to prove, first of all, that a Nazi threat does not exist in Ukraine at all," Pushkov noted.
He insists that this threat is real. "It is fact that these parties have gained almost one-seventh of all votes. I think this is proof of the trend in Ukrainian developments which will be determined by extreme nationalist sentiments to a large extent," the committee chairman emphasized.