Crimea summit lays foundation for work in five directions – Kuleba

KYIV. Aug 26 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The constituent summit of the Crimea Platform, which took place on August 23 in Kyiv, is the beginning of a great work that will unfold in five directions, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

"The first is the strengthening of the international policy of non-recognition of the attempt to annex Crimea. The second is the use of restrictive measures, sanctions. The third is to counter violations of human rights. The fourth is to guarantee the safety and freedom of navigation. And the fifth is to overcome the economic and environmental consequences of the occupation," Kuleba said at an online briefing on Thursday.

According to him, Ukraine will not stop in the process of returning the Crimea peninsula, occupied by the Russian Federation, to its jurisdiction. "We will work exactly as long as necessary to return Crimea to Ukraine. And the fact that after seven years of occupation and all the billions that Russia spent to make people forget about Crimea, we have broken this tendency, indicates that we are capable of winning and we, the Ukrainian people will finally get what we are striving for – the restoration of justice and territorial integrity of Ukraine," Kuleba said.

The Foreign Minister reported that 46 foreign delegations, states, international organizations – all of them confirmed that they do not and will never recognize the illegal occupation of Crimea and have undertaken a number of obligations set forth in the declaration of the Crimea Platform.

"We have a very strong argument in our hands – this is the declaration of the Crimea Platform. This declaration is the strongest document on Crimea, adopted at the international level since 2014. It was supported by all the member states of the Crimea Platform summit and the EU, and all NATO member states as well. But the document remains open for accession, and therefore we will work to expand participation in it," Kuleba said.

According to him, the Crimea platform not only caused an unprecedented reaction in the world media, political circles, but also in the Russian Federation.

"These are directly opposite reactions. If the whole world notes that Ukraine has broken the silence around Crimea and returned this issue to the international agenda, then Russia, on the contrary, drowns in stories about the insignificance of this initiative. We are pleased with the reaction of the Russian Federation," the minister said.

He also said that the Crimea Platform is an important element of the foreign policy strategy that was recently adopted.

"Seven years after the start of the Russian aggression and the illegal occupation of Crimea, we have corrected the historical mistake when not a single stable format of international interaction existed for the peninsula. It was very difficult. Now I can already say that there was not a single simple issue in the organization of the Crimea Platform, everything was very difficult, but we showed that we can achieve the best results when we work as a team," the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.

Kuleba reported that all of Ukraine’s partners who supported it in the Crimea platform note that "the launch of the Crimea platform at such a high level is a great defeat for Russia in the Crimea direction."