The Soviet Union could have been preserved by turning it into a confederation, said the first President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk.
As the politician said on the air of the Ukraine 24 channel, before the signing of the Belovezhskaya agreements in Moscow, they discussed an option in which the USSR could be preserved as a single state.
“Yeltsin consulted with many leaders of the republics, I remember we sat together and discussed this topic,” Kravchuk recalled.
According to him, Yeltsin proposed to create a confederation instead of a federal state, after which the politicians discussed the details and went to Gorbachev.
“Yeltsin says:” Mikhail Sergeevich, let’s think about how to reform the country from a federation to a confederation, “said Kravchuk.
In response, Gorbachev asked for an example of such a state, to which Yeltsin pointed to Switzerland, where there is a constant rotation of the presidency.
“Gorbachev thought so and said:” No, no, no, this is not possible, there must be one president, “Kravchuk continued.
He added that then he realized that such a scenario would not work, and after a while Gorbachev proposed a referendum on the preservation of the USSR.
“And it became clear that Gorbachev was not going to change anything radically. He wanted to make changes while maintaining the system. And this is impossible,” the ex-president of Ukraine concluded.