You're reading: Azarov: I feel one hundred percent Ukrainian

Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has said he feels like a Ukrainian and is not ashamed of his Soviet past.

"I would like to assure you: I feel like one hundred percent Ukrainian and I identify myself only with Ukraine and nothing else," he said in an interview with the German media in Kyiv on April 11.

Azarov said he was surprised when asked about the influence of the work experience he gained in the Soviet Union on his premiership today.

"Just like [Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela] Merkel has no reason for being ashamed of her past in East Germany, I am not ashamed of my past in the Soviet Union," he said.

"I have no reason to be ashamed of my Soviet past: I saw both the positive and negative sides of that system, and now my task [as prime minister] is not to lose the positive [experience] of that time, and in no way repeat the negative [experience]," Azarov said.