Dozens of Countries Agree to Participate in Crimean Platform Summit

Almost 40 states have already agreed to take part in the inaugural summit of the Crimean Platform, which will take place on 24 August 2021, on the thirtieth anniversary of Ukraine’s independence.

A relevant announcement was made by Oleksiy Arestovych, the spokesperson for the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group.

He stressed that both the Donbas case and the Crimean case would gradually become “unified into one node inevitably” but the Crimean Platform would not touch upon the situation in Donbas.

“If we raise these issues together, for example, at the level of UN or other formats, it does not mean that the Minsk process is dead. It has no alternative so far, although this process is not the best one. If there is an alternative, then we can talk about switching to another format. To date, there are no grounds to talk about it,” Arestovych said.

He also clarified that the issues related to the occupation of Crimea and part of Donbas would be unified in the collective interstate claim of Ukraine against the Russian Federation as the aggressor state. These are “two directions of the Russian invasion and both will be discussed within the framework of a single state policy.”

As a reminder, on 26 February, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on certain measures aimed at de-occupation and reintegration of the Crimean peninsula. In particular, he instructed the Government to organise and launch the Crimean Platform, as well as to implement measures to develop and support the Crimean Tatar language and culture and protect the rights of the residents of the temporarily occupied Crimea.

Bohdan Marusyak