Russia’s key escalation today is aimed at intimidating the European Union in order to reduce public support for Ukraine amongst the populations of EU countries. This was stated by Chairman of the Kyiv Security Forum and Prime Minister of Ukraine from 2014 to 2016, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in an interview with Valery Chaly for the ‘Geopolitical Dialogues’ programme.
“There is a whole series of operations that Russia is carrying out on EU territory, ranging from the well-known recent incident involving a drone in Leipzig to arson attacks on military facilities, assassination attempts – as in the case of the head of the German company Rheinmetall – and the funding of political parties in various countries,” he said.
Yatsenyuk noted that Russia is attempting to instil a sense of constant fear in EU member states, and in this way to convince them that they should withdraw their support for Ukraine, after which ‘everything will be calm’ in the European Union.
According to him, these operations are sometimes successful. “The rise in popularity of the AfD party in eastern Germany can be attributed in part to a special operation by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). It is not the sole reason, but they have played a part there,” Yatsenyuk noted.
Apart from that, KSF Chairman emphasised that Russia is deliberately creating tension between Ukraine and its neighbours; this is particularly evident in Ukrainian-Polish relations.