The former premier Mykola Azarov also said he does not condemn Yanukovych for leaving Kiev and heading for the country’s east when his liquidation was reportedly being organized

MOSCOW, February 4. /TASS/. Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said Wednesday that the fate of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, killed in October 2011, had been prepared for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Azarov said he does not want to judge Yanukovych’s deeds. "I would not like to be a judge," Azarov said at a news conference in Moscow on the occasion of the publication of his book Ukraine at a Crossroads. He said Yanukovych had the opportunity to "keep order in the country," prevent the February 2014 coup. "When an operation to shoot dead people on Maidan [Independence Square in downtown Kiev, the symbol of Ukrainian protests] was organized, the entire world and Ukraine were frightened — it was for the first time in our history that over 130 people were cold-bloodedly [shot dead] on Maidan, 26 of them being law enforcement officers," Azarov said.

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"In this context, Yanukovych lost his heart and the hands of those who plotted a coup were free. He was called a bloody tyrant and it was said he was subject to liquidation. Groups tasked with capturing him and implementing the Libyan variant were formed. He was to have died like Gaddafi," he said. "What was happening then in Ukraine can’t be compared with coups in Africa," Azarov said. The former premier also said he does not condemn Yanukovych for leaving Kiev and heading for the country’s east when his liquidation was being organized. "Three thousand and five hundred went to smash the presidential residence. Among them were 18 who were to have liquidated Yanukovich during the pogrom," Azarov said.

Crisis in Ukraine Ukraine has been in deep crisis since the end of 2013, when then-President Viktor Yanukovych suspended the signing of an association agreement with the European Union to study the deal more thoroughly. The move triggered mass riots that eventually led to a coup in February 2014. The coup that brought chaos to Ukraine prompted the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol with a special status to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of coup-imposed authorities, hold a referendum and secede from Ukraine to reunify with Russia in mid-March 2014 after some 60 years as part of Ukraine. After that, mass protests erupted in Ukraine’s south-east, where local residents, apparently inspired by Crimea's example, did not recognize the coup-imposed authorities either, formed militias and started fighting for their rights. Thousands of people have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands have fled Ukraine’s south-east as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions during Kiev’s military operation, conducted since mid-April 2014, to regain control over parts of the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, according to UN data. A ceasefire was agreed upon at talks between the parties to the Ukrainian conflict mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5, 2014 in Belarusian capital Minsk two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed his plan to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine.