The Novorossiya (New Russia) project was designed to engulf nine regions of Ukraine, but it failed, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has said.
“The key plan at the early stage was to form Novorossiya. Nine regions of Ukraine – Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa regions and Crimea – were to be cut off. Half of the country, more than half of the industrial potential had to be cut off… by the Russians, where they planned to create a ‘Russian world’ reserve – Novorossiya, as this project was called,” the president said on the “Year of Poroshenko” program on the occasion of the first year of his tenure aired on Ukrainian television channels on May 28 evening.
According to the president, this project envisaged a surge of protests in all these areas, the deployment of Russian troops and the destruction of the country.
“Now we clearly know what the plan to destroy the country was,” Poroshenko said adding that the plan failed.
“The Novorossiya project can be considered closed. We have to admit that Donetsk and Luhansk for political, economic, social, state, geopolitical, and security reasons can only exist within a single independent sovereign state of Ukraine,” the president said.
