Ukrainian presidential candidate and MP Sergiy Tigipko has said he supports seeking a compromise with the inhabitants of the south-east to restore peace in the country.

"Gunmen have seized Donetsk Railways, due to which freight trains stopped. Plants are daily shot at. Radicals are deliberately destroying infrastructure and the economy to destabilize the situation," Tigipko said at a meeting with the workers of S-Rostok farm (Mykolaiv region).

He also noted that the desire of separatists to secede from Ukraine would worsen the economic situation among the local population, as well as turn the region into another "gray area" analogous to Transdniestria, Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Crimea.

"Neither external nor internal investors want to go there. None of the major Russian banks want to enter Crimea today, because tomorrow it will not be given credits from the West, Visa and MasterCard systems will be taken. Sberbank brought its own equipment, but holds it on board a ship to show this is Russian territory. Only small banks that do not have large development prospects are entering Crimea," said Tigipko.