(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) A Ukrainian delegate attacked a Russian delegate’s secretary after the latter snatched away the Ukrainian flag.
According to CBS News, the fistfight erupted in Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday in the corridors of talks on Black Sea cooperation. Oleksandr Marikovski, the Ukrainian delegate, posted a video of what happened on his Facebook page
“Paws off our flag, paws off Ukraine, you bastard!” Marikovski wrote in the post after the confrontation.
The incident happened in the lobby when the Russian delegate’s secretary, Valery Stavitskiy, decided that it will be a good idea to snatch away the Ukrainian flag in front of Ukrainians. After Stavitskiy took the flag, Marikovski grabbed it back, while punching and slapping the Russian in the process.
After the incident, the consul and a doctor came to the hotel to attend a Russian flag snatcher, according to Russia’s news agency TASS.
Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.N. Sergiy Kyslytsya also authenticated the video when he spoke to CBS News on Friday, asking if Americans or people of any nation would be okay with someone taking down their flag.
Russia’s U.N. first Deputy Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy confirmed the video as well. In his interview, he said that “it was an apex of the whole day” of the so-called Ukrainian provocations during the meeting, even though it is a Russian who snatched away the flag of another country.
Earlier, members of Ukraine’s parliament hung a Ukraine flag at their table before Turkey’s parliament speaker Mustafa Sentop nixed it and later used the same gaslighting tactic that Russians used by condemning some of the Ukrainian delegates’ “provocative and physically offensive actions.”
Both the Ukrainian and Russian U.N. Ambassadors stated that the meeting where the beating took place was not at the talks in Istanbul, Turkey, that took place on Friday. During the talks, the U.N., Turkey, Ukraine and Russia were meeting to try to salvage the grain deal that is up for renewal on May 18.
