Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) Oleksandr Turchynov said that he had not consulted in the spring of 2014 on the beginning of the Anti-Terrorist operation (ATO) in the east of the country.

"I didn't consult. I did not like the reaction of our partners to my decision to start mobilization. Some of them said that we did not need to do this, because this could have been a 'red flag' for Putin and a reason for launching a large-scale war in the territory of mainland Ukraine. I'm not talking about the refusal to provide us with any military assistance in those hard times," he said in an interview with the BBC.

Turchynov said that he therefore decided to start ATO without consulting with anyone.

Answering a question about whether he supported contacts with the leadership of Russia in April-May 2014, the NSDC secretary said: "The last of my talks with representatives of the Russian leadership was a conversation with Sergey Naryshkin, then chairman of the State Duma, and now - the head of the Foreign Russian Intelligence Service, on March 1, 2014, before the onset of the escalation in Donbas."

According to him, then, after the Russian Federation decided to send its troops to Ukraine, the Russian General Staff put forward an ultimatum to the Ukrainian military in Crimea: immediately lay down their arms and surrender. "I asked to tell Putin the following: "We will defend our positions, and you will be responsible for all the blood." Then they did not start the assault on our positions, but we got a vital time for us," he said.

Turchynov said that he did not see any sense in such negotiations in conditions of aggression against Ukraine.