The refusal of the then Ukrainian government to purchase Russian gas in 2014 was one of the decisions that deprived Putin of an important instrument of influence. This was stated by the Prime Minister of Ukraine in 2014-2016, Chairman of the Kyiv Security Forum Arseniy Yatsenyuk during an interview with Dmytro Gordon.

"Ukraine broke free from Russia, and that's what drove Putin crazy. Starting with Ukraine's refusal to buy gas from Russia's Gazprom. Imagine if we were still dependent on Russia's Gazprom today. That was the first thing I did. Second, imagine if we were completely dependent on Russian fuel for our nuclear energy. I then began to switch Energoatom to Westinghouse, to American fuel [...] But let's start with the army. 5% of GDP is what NATO member countries [pay] now, but back then they were even afraid to talk about 5%," Yatsenyuk said.

Russia's war against Ukraine has been going on for 12 years, and the Kremlin's plans for a forceful scenario were formed long before the occupation of Crimea, during the conflict over Tuzla Island in 2003.

"People went straight from Maidan to fight. Now there is a debate about whether it is longer than the so-called Great Patriotic War waged by the Soviet Union. And Ukraine suffered the most in World War II [...] Do you know when Putin wanted to invade? Ever since he attacked Tuzla (in 2003, ed.)," Yatsenyuk said.

According to the Chairman of the KSF, it was the resistance in 2014 that saved Ukraine from the scenario that unfolded in neighbouring Belarus. "If it weren't for 2014, if we hadn't resisted, we would have become a worse copy of Belarus. Remember what happened to the Belarusians after the failed protests against Lukashenko. How many were killed, how many were imprisoned," Yatsenyuk said.

At the same time, Yatsenyuk stressed that at the beginning of the Russian aggression, Ukraine was in a critical state. He cited data from a secret report by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2014.

There is a secret report that I requested in the archives of the General Staff of Ukraine. The Minister of Defence and the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine were not just Russian agents, they were citizens of the Russian Federation. They were Russia's puppets. That report clearly stated that Ukraine had 5,000 military personnel capable of taking up arms and defending Ukraine. I won't even mention the financial situation: there were only 108 thousand hryvnia in the single treasury account for the entire country," Yatsenyuk emphasised.

According to him, under such conditions, Ukraine's survival can be called a real miracle created by the Ukrainian people themselves.

‘We actually had two miracles: we survived in 2014, and we survived in 2022. The Ukrainian people themselves create these miracles. If it weren’t for the people, if it weren’t for the minority devoted to their country, Ukrainian values and patriotism, we would not have survived,’ the former prime minister stressed.