Oleg Tsaryov started his career as a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine and consistently pushed Kremlin's narratives. In this 2014 interview for Ukrainian TV he was asked whether Russia occupied Crimea but he avoided answering this question directly and started evading by throwing unrelated statements about "Banderites fault" and "Volhynia massacre". Annoyed host pushed him towards more basic questions, such as "when the WW2 started". His long pause, blank stare and "what" in response became iconic. Tsaryov was clearly expecting that he will be offered an easy scene for uncontested monologue about "Banderites", as this narrative only started gaining traction in Russian propaganda, and Tsaryov was likely tasked with spinning it in Ukraine. In 2014-2015 Tsaryov served as a speaker for "parliament of Novorossiya", a Kremlin project that was later shut down.