Sure.
I would like to quickly just mention that this morning we had a live feed with the First National television channel in Ukraine discussing the human rights abuses and the military situation. It will be online and it's in English. For those of you who are interested, I can pass the link on to you later.
The most important aspect that I add to this brief that I've provided you is a witness account of the people who have been tortured, abducted in Crimea. An eyewitness accounts says that, “The former minister of forestries in Crimea spoke to us this morning about the manner in which he had been abducted by men in green, backed by the Russian military. They were held for 11 days, beaten, tortured with electric shock therapy. They were interrogated daily. They weren't fed for a number of days.”
The main question the interrogators were asking them was, who is funding the Euromaidan in Kiev? That was the main question, who is funding them. And where are the weapons? Where is Ukraine storing its weapons?
Now I would like to make a little note about the situation on Crimean refugees.
On March 20, the Verkhovna Rada had a meeting expecting about 300,000 refugees to be fleeing Crimea. This is a very disturbing issue not only for Ukraine's internal situation, but also for states such as Canada. Canada already has one young gentleman present in Ottawa who is facing basically becoming a stateless person. He is a Ukrainian from Crimea. The Russians are forcing everybody to adopt Russian citizenship. All of the bank accounts have been frozen. Credit cards aren't used. This gentleman from Ukraine is here, and he doesn't have money, he doesn't have anything. There is more than one, but I know of this person personally. Property has been hijacked. So businesses, everything, have just been taken over.
I will now start from the beginning of my points.
It's important to realize that what we're seeing happening in Ukraine right now is not an accident and it's not a reaction to anything. It is a long-term plan that has been started since 1994, when the Russian Black Sea Fleet was being divided. It was the Soviet fleet being divided into the Russian and Ukrainian fleets.
The man behind this current scene, who requires special attention, is a man named Victor Medvedchuk. He leads a program called the Referendum Project or the Ukrainian Choice. This is a Russian Kremlin-organized plan.
A little bit more on Medvedchuk. He is something called the kum of Vladimir Putin. A kum is a very serious formal relationship in Ukrainian culture where one is a godparent to the other's children. Victor Medvedchuk was a former adviser to Leonid Kuchma, the second president of Ukraine, and Leonid Kuchma's current son-in-law is Victor Pinchuk, who is a major oligarch on board.
Moving on, because we have very little time, it's important to note that the current acting Prime Minister, Yatseniuk, declared in the White House that legislation will be adopted in regard to giving effect to Medvedchuk's plan on local referendum. Local referendum is forbidden by Ukrainian constitutional law.
Yesterday—I think it was this morning here in Canada—the information came that Yatseniuk has announced that, next to the presidential elections that will be taking place in May, there will also be mayoral elections taking place. This is very significant due to the fact that these mayoral elections will be taking place in the areas currently under direct military threat from the Russian Federation, that is, Lugansk, Dnepropetrovsk, and Donetsk. Odessa may be on the list. I can't confirm it at this moment, but I could do so later.
Yatseniuk's position has to be clarified in this regard. The current interim government must be treated as such. It is infiltrated with at least three powerful individuals with direct connections to the Medvedchuk Referendum Project. It is necessary to identify those people. Also keep in mind that the Communists have a very strong role in Ukrainian politics, particularly as it relates to post-Soviet political-criminal relations. The Communist Party voted 100% for the current interim government. That should sound alarm bells.
The role of Yulia Tymoshenko is a critical one. She is acting as a private person; however, she is still an unindicted co-conspirator in the United States. She received the monopoly of gas from Putin back in the nineties. When Ukraine separated from the Russian Federation, it did not have a gas debt. Through my research, I spoke with many people in Ukraine, government officials, who claimed that she didn't even.... Part of the gas debt that was used to make the Russian Black Sea Fleet stay on Crimean territory is actually debt that she created together with Pavlo Lazarenko.
The apparent latency of the government as it pertains to the military defence of Ukraine is causing turmoil and massive distrust inside Ukraine. Attention should be paid to the recent switches of ministers of defence in Ukraine. It started with a man called Salamatin. I believe it was in 2013. He was a Russian citizen who actually didn't have a right to be a Ukrainian minister of defence. After that, during the revolution, Yanukovych appointed another man, who remained in power basically until Crimea had been taken over.
The clearing of Maidan is potentially taking place right now. It is important to remember that 83% of the people on Maidan did not belong to or support any political party. They are now being cleared under the misnomers of fascists and neo-Nazis.
Yesterday a leader of the Right Sector, Muzychko, was killed. The question is this. The Ministry of Internal Affairs presents it as him having shot himself in custody. MPs from the opposition, but particularly Oles Doniy, who's been to Ottawa and has spoken to the government earlier, actually bring out the story that he had been hunted down and killed. Importantly, in this regard, Muzychko actually did go on YouTube and left a film saying that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine was after him and was going to kill him.
A fund to support Ukrainian military forces in Crimea has been established by retired Admiral Volodymyr Bezkorovainiy. This fund is worthy of attention. Whereas the national guard fund and the Ukrainian military are also asking for money publicly, this fund of Bezkorovainiy's is actually interesting, because it's directly aimed at helping the Ukrainian military who have been thrown out of Crimea. They've lived there. They have their families, their children, and their schools there. And now they're wanted men under threat.
Another issue is the question of lustration. Lustration is starting much in the same way that it did with Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the police.
How am I doing with time?