OREANDA-NEWS. Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has found the main culprit to blame in the problems of Kiev’s subway. Russia is the cause of slowing down the development plans of the subway, he said.

“Aggression of the Russian Federation slowed down the development plans of the Kiev subway. Also, attacks in hybrid war are affecting it. In 2014 alone, more than 200 subway mining reports were received,” Poroshenko stated on Wednesday at the presentation of the new subway stations on Syretsko-Pecherskaya line.

The subway stopped only once, Ukrainian leader added - from February 18 to 20, 2014, on the day of the escalation of clashes in the capital’s Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti). At the same time, according to Poroshenko, the “Russian aggression” began, which slowed down the construction. However, Ukrainians “learned to resist aggression on the battlefield and in the city," the president of Ukraine added.

Kiev subway, in Soviet times named after Vladimir Lenin, was opened on November 6, 1960. It became third in the USSR after the underground transport systems in Moscow and Leningrad. Every day it transports about 1.5 million people. It is the 60th in the world by length and 29th by passenger traffic, and it has only three lines. In November 2013, the subway was extended from Hippodrome station to Teremki station, and then the construction stopped.

The First Deputy Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, Vladimir Dzhabarov, commented on Poroshenko’s statement, “To be honest, a mentally healthy person should not say such nonsense. I don’t even know if there is at least one problem of Ukraine for which Russia is not blamed,” Dzhabarov stated. The senator also noted that since “entry to Ukraine is banned for the majority of able-bodied Russians,” he cannot judge the state of the country's infrastructure.

Political analyst Andrey Suzdaltsev said that the topic of “Russian interference” in the Ukrainian elections will be actively promoted not only by Poroshenko, but also by other participants of the presidential campaign. According to him, Ukrainian politicians will most likely explain any unsuccessful election result by outside interference.

In Kiev, they regularly accuse Russia of “invading” Ukraine, but there was no evidence that Moscow was involved in the hostilities in Donbas. At the same time, Russia stresses that it is not the party to the internal Ukrainian conflict, and does not provide material, technical and financial assistance to the militia of the new Donetsk and Lugansk People Republics. Besides, Kremlin has repeatedly drawn the attention of Western countries to the reluctance of Kiev to fulfill its part of the Minsk agreements, which say about mechanisms for de-escalation of the military conflict in Donbas.