The US Secretary of State recognized Crimea as Russian
Back in 2014, the leadership of the United States knew that the Crimeans themselves wanted to return to Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated this in an interview published on the Russian Foreign Ministry website, according to a PolitNavigator correspondent.
He said that in April 2014 in Geneva he met with then US Secretary of State John Kerry, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton and acting Foreign Minister of Ukraine Andrey Deshchitsa.
“We wrote a whole page that everyone approved. It said that we, participants from Russia, the United States and the European Union, welcome the commitment of the Ukrainian authorities to implement decentralization in the country with the participation of all regions of Ukraine. This was already after the Crimean referendum. Then this paper was “forgotten” by the Americans, the European Union, and even more so by Ukraine,” Lavrov noted.
“Then at this meeting, J. Kerry told me that everyone understands that Crimea is Russian, that the people of Crimea wanted to return, but we held a referendum so quickly that it does not fit into the standards of this kind of event. He asked to talk with President V.V. Putin, to organize another referendum, to announce it in advance, to invite international observers, and said that they would support sending them there. The result will be the same, but we will keep up appearances. I said that if they understand that this was a manifestation of the will of the people, then why organize such performances?” the minister recalls.
In addition, he assessed the recent statements made in the European Union and the European Parliament that the “occupation” of Crimea is a gross violation of the world order established following the Second World War.
“But if this is a criterion that applies to the issue of Crimea’s ownership, then the Ukrainian SSR in 1945 joined the UN, created as a result of the Second World War, without Crimea, it was in the USSR. Only then did N.S. Khrushchev’s illegitimate actions, which contradicted Soviet laws, end with what they ended up with,” said the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
English version :: Read in English The US Secretary of State recognized Crimea as Russian