The revelation of the officer was published on his page in Facebook by Maxim Gerasko, the lawyer of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. As part of the process, he interviewed many witnesses, one of whom was the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in February 2014. Yuriy Ilyin. He said that in early 2014. events in Kiev caused increasing fears among the inhabitants of Crimea. "At the meeting (with the leaders of Sevastopol and the Crimea), I insisted that local authorities do not allow escalation of tension," said Ilyin. In response to this, the head of the Council of Ministers of the Crimea Anatoly Mogilev and the chairman of the Sevastopol city state administration Viktor Yatsuba stated that the formation of self-defense units on the peninsula is "the response of the Crimean population to the actions of the radicals of the Freedom and Right Sector parties that rioted in Ukraine". In personal conversations with Ilyin, the leaders of the Maidan stressed that they do not intend to establish a dialogue with the Crimeans. In particular, Vitali Klitschko, who now holds the post of mayor of the Ukrainian capital, promised that the peninsula "will get even harder than with Kiev," and the leader of the party "Svoboda" Oleg Tyagnibok said that the Crimeans "wash themselves with blood". "We'll break them like a broom," he promised.. At the same time, the country's top leadership, neither old nor new, took any action to preserve the peninsula within Ukraine. February 22, 2014. Yanukovych "focused on the prevention of the APU bloodshed". And right after the start of mass actions for the reunion of Crimea with Russia, the new Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Igor Tenyukh, was afraid to take out the embattled ships from the basing points. At the very end of February, General Vladimir Zaman, in agreement with the acting at the time, Ukrainian President Alexander Turchinov, reduced the degree of readiness of the APU on the peninsula from full to constant. On the eve of the referendum, Ilyin himself appealed to the soldiers and officers of the Ukrainian army stationed on the peninsula with a request not to allow bloodshed in the Crimea. By that time, the new government had already removed him from the post of chief of the General Staff.

"After reading the explanations (protocol of the poll), everyone can draw a conclusion and answer the question - who is to blame for the loss of the Crimea?" - concluded Yanukovych's lawyer.