17:17 04-01-2015
“He called and said, ‘I’m coming, either tonight or tomorrow,’ ” Mr. Dobkin recalled, adding that Mr. Yanukovych presented his proposed trip east as just another presidential inspection tour and was desperate to “make it look like he wasn’t running away.” To keep up appearances, he asked Mr. Dobkin to “ ‘pick out a few factories for me to visit.’ ”
Mr. Dobkin tried to set something up at a Kharkiv turbine factory, Turboatom, but the director, who would previously have jumped at a chance to meet the president, now wanted nothing to do with Mr. Yanukovych. The director, said Mr. Dobkin, declined even to take his call.
Met at the airport in Kharkiv after midnight by Mr. Dobkin, Mr. Yanukovych did not seem in a panic, or even to understand the gravity of the situation. “He thought this was a temporary difficulty,” Mr. Dobkin recalled, describing the president as “a guy on another planet” who believed the deal brokered by the Europeans could still provide for a graceful exit later in the year.
He did not realize, Mr. Dobkin said, that rather than securing his future, the deal, which provided for early elections and other concessions, only sent a signal to Mr. Yanukovych’s allies that it was time to change sides.
"When a leader stops being a leader, all the people around him fall away,” Mr. Dobkin said. “That is the rule.” He added, “To betray on time is not to betray, but to foresee.”
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