You're reading: Tsariov issues a warning to Ukraine’s oligarchs

 Presidential candidate Oleh Tsariov issued a warning to Ukraine's oligarchs to start talking to separatists in eastern Ukraine, or face potential loss of business. The warning was released on his Facebook page, and was aimed at oligarchs of south and east.

“If you want to keep your business
and have influence, within the framework of law and a democratic
process, on the life of our people, you have to make agreements with
people and its representatives, but not with representatives of the
unlawful Kyiv authorities,” Tsariov wrote. “Otherwise the people
who have risen to affirm their sovereign rights, will treat you the
same way as illegitimate government in Kyiv.”

Tsariov said that Ukraine’s south-east
is becoming an independent subject of negotiations, and that the
oligarchs have to start to take it into account. Ukraine’s government
maintains that people who have taken over buildings and towns are
Moscow-backed separatists. Tsariov, a member of the Party of Regions,
is one of Ukraine’s most pro-Russian politicians.

Ukraine’s oligarchs have reacted very
differently to the events unfolding in eastern Ukraine. While some of
them have kept silence, others – namely billionaires Serhiy Taruta
and Igor Kolomoiskiy took jobs as governors of troublesome regions
to keep them in check. Kolomoiskiy also offered a $10,000
fee
for captured Moscow agents.

Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov,
who comes from Donetsk, where the most troubles have been unfolding
in the past weeks, has issued a number of lukewarm statements in
support of a unified Ukraine.

“Only
the negotiating table can help to put the escalation of tensions to
an end,” he said in the most recent one.