MOSCOW. Aug 8 (Interfax) - The hostilities in southeastern Ukraine will not stop as long as the current Kyiv administration is in office, according to Russian Presidential Representative for Environmental Protection, Ecology, and Transport Sergei Ivanov, who was the deputy prime minister supervising the defense sector in 2008 and the defense minister before that.
There was "a coup backed by the West" in Ukraine, Ivanov told the newspaper Kommersant, discussing the causes of the Donbas conflict.
"There was a coup backed by the West in Ukraine. They backed it in writing, in fact - please note that the foreign ministers signed the well-known declaration that was cynically breached the next day and pretended to have forgotten about it. People in Crimea and eastern Ukraine refused to recognize the coup and the illegal Kyiv authorities, street protests began, and the situation developed in a rather spontaneous manner," Ivanov said.
As to when the hostilities in eastern Ukraine might cease, Ivanov said, "There is no such prospect as long as the incumbent Kyiv administration is in office."
According to Ivanov, there were Russian troops in Crimea.
"We never overstepped the quota of 25,000 servicemen in Crimea envisaged by the Russian-Ukrainian agreement; that's for sure. Even after our group was reinforced, we never exceeded the limit of 25,000 so that they couldn't accuse us of doing so," Ivanov said.