Russia continues to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and Crimea chose to “reunite with Russia,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at his annual press conference on Jan. 15.
With Russia’s illegal occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea already nearing the end of its fourth year, Lavrov insisted that Russia was not a threat to Ukraine.
Summing up the events of 2017, Lavrov blamed Kyiv for the deadlock in the Minsk peace process for the Donbas, and brushed away the issue of Crimea.
“We continue to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine at the borders that formed after the referendum in the Crimea and after the reunification of Crimea with the Russian Federation,” he said.
“The bottom line is that Ukraine has subscribed to the Minsk accord, this has nothing to do with Crimea, we need to push the Ukraine authorities to implement what they committed to,” Lavrov said. “The Minsk accords are the most important thing at the moment.”
He said that the Minsk agreements were clear, but the West’s “blind support” for Kyiv had hindered the process.
“The United States wants to dictate ultimatums and is unwilling to listen to other centers of power,” Lavrov said. “They are unwilling to accept a multipolar world.”
Lavrov also dodged questions on the introduction of a peacekeeping force in the Donbas and Russian military casualties in Ukraine. He claimed Russia had not broken its obligations under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up its arsenal of nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from the United States, Britain and Russia, because Moscow had not used nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
Russia invaded the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in late February 2014, when Ukraine was in the midst of a popular uprising against the corrupt regime of former President Viktor Yanukovych. Russian troops in unmarked uniforms took over the peninsula, seized public buildings and infrastructure, and besieged Ukrainian military bases.
The Kremlin then hastily organized a sham referendum, held on March 16, 2014 and two days later declared it had annexed the territory. Only a handful of states, including North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Zimbabwe, have recognized the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea.
Later, in April 2014, Russia fomented a war in the Donbas that has since cost more than 10,200 lives, injured tens of thousands more, and displaced more than 1 million people.
Russia denies that it is intervening militarily in Ukraine, but overwhelming evidence collected since 2014 shows these denials to be false.
