Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister from 2007 until September, has given a very frank interview to Politico’s Ben Judah. Sikorski, who has always held a firm-but-diplomatic stance with regards to Russia, appears to now be holdng no punched. The now-former foreign minister is even giving away details of private conversations with world leaders, and what he has to say about Russia, Putin, and the mechanisms of the Kremlin, is alarming.

“I think psychologically the regime has been transformed by the annexation of Crimea,” Sikorski told Politico Magazine. “This was the moment that finally convinced all doubters and turned all heads. This was Napoleon after Austerlitz. This was Hitler after the fall of Paris. This was the moment that finally centralized everything into the hands of Vladimir Putin.” “What is happening now is the full embrace of neo-imperialism,” Sikorski says. “They have exploited every post-Soviet and neo-Soviet atavism and made it real because an alarming proportion of the population believes it. This is how they have refueled their regime.”

But then Sikorski goes on to leak details from conversations with Yanukovych which indicate that he feared Russia even before Maidan:

“We learned Russia ran calculations on what provinces would be profitable to grab,” says Sikorski, who claims that Poland became aware the Kremlin had calculated it would be profitable to annex Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa regions, while the assessing that the Donbass area currently controlled by Putin’s rebels would not, on its own, not be profitable to incorporate into Russia. “By that time they were already doing calculations about how to seize Crimea as a way of blackmailing Viktor Yanukovych,” says Sikorski, “I know from my conversations and meeting with Yanukovych that he wanted to get the [European Union-Ukraine] Association Agreement. But in November 2013 something happened, something snapped. Based on our conversations, my sense is that it was something Putin told him in Sochi. I think that Putin had kompromat [blackmail material] on Yanukovych: we now know there was a weekly, biweekly truck taking out the cash [stolen from the Ukrainian budget] in a cash transfer. And I think he told him: ‘Don’t sign the Association Agreement; otherwise we’ll seize Crimea.’ That’s why he cracked.”

Is this credible? In a speech given by ousted President President Viktor Yanukovych soon after he fled to Russia, he said that he was considering joining the EU but then traveled to Moscow where he was informed of the true costs of joining the EU. Many looked over this part of his speech, seeing it as Yanukovych trying to make himself look more amenable to the Euromaidan crowd. But there is another reading — he was bullied by the Kremlin to reject the EU deal. There are facts to support this other narrative. For instance, when Yanukovych traveled to Sochi right before announcing that he would stall Ukraine’s signing of the EU association agreement, he got “lost” on his way to visit Putin and appears to have tried to leave Russia without the meeting ever haven taken place.

These are only a few of the alarming claims made in the interview. Read the entire article here: Putin’s Coup — How the Russian leader used the Ukraine crisis to consolidate his dictatorship.