Crimea ‘not up for discussion’ – Moscow

Any Ukraine peace process must proceed from the reality on the ground, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said, responding to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comments about Crimea.

In an address to Ukraine’s “Crimean Platform” meeting by video message on Wednesday, Erdogan claimed that the peninsula rightfully belongs to Kiev under international law.

“Subjects of the Russian Federation are not subject to negotiation,” Zakharova told reporters who asked about Erdogan’s remarks during the press briefing at the Foreign Ministry, adding that anyone who wants to address the issue needs to read the Russian constitution first. 

Residents of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia in March 2014, shortly after a US-backed coup in Kiev overthrew the Ukrainian government in favor of militant nationalists. Neither Ukraine nor its Western backers have ever accepted the results of the referendum, declaring it to be an illegal “annexation.”

Crimea had been Russian territory for centuries, until the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev reassigned it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954.

“Our support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence remains unchanged,” Erdogan said in his message. “The return of Crimea to Ukraine is a requirement of international law.”

Erdogan also claimed that the Crimean Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group, were “indigenous” to the peninsula. His comments come just a week after Türkiye officially filed its application to join BRICS.

Following Crimea’s return to Russia, Donetsk and Lugansk also declared independence from Kiev, as the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Moscow initially declined their request to join Russia, endorsing instead the idea of regulating their autonomous status within Ukraine through the Minsk agreements, negotiated with the help of France and Germany.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande revealed in December 2022 that the Minsk process had been a ruse to buy time for Ukraine to arm and prepare for a conflict with Russia.

In September 2023, the DPR and LPR voted to join Russia, along with most of Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions. They have since been integrated into the Russian Federation and Moscow’s official position is that there can be no peace with Kiev that does not recognize that reality.