Ukraine considered Catherine’s decree on the annexation of Crimea to Russia an empty piece of paper - this saved the document in the Simferopol archive
Simferopol, January 29 (PolitNavigator, Semyon Dmitriev) – By the time of the Referendum on March 16, Ukraine had not managed to remove a single document from the main archive of Crimea.
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The head of the State Archive Service of the Republic of Crimea, Oleg Lobov, announced this at a press conference in Simferopol on Thursday.
“We saved everything. Yes, there was a difficult period when unknown individuals tried to break into our building. We guarded him ourselves, from eight in the morning until seven in the evening, and at night we hired a security guard. Perhaps this was the only thing that saved the archive; we know very well that in Abkhazia the archive was completely burned,” the official noted.
It is not known who tried to break into the premises, since the archive staff were in no hurry to get to know the intruders.
According to Lobov, at the moment the archive is functioning normally. In particular, the department received more than 5 applications from deported citizens.
“Citizens,” he noted, “are asking to confirm the fact that they or their relatives have lived in Crimea since 1935, since we do not have earlier documents. There are already more than 5 such requests,” noted the head of the archive service.
But there are early documents about Crimea belonging to Russia in the archive:
“We have Catherine’s decree on the annexation of Crimea to Russia. When we were in Ukraine, this document was not recognized as having historical value and remained with us. Today this is clearly for the better,” said Oleg Lobov.