Kyiv: War with Russia will end after reparation has been paid and Crimea returned
The Russian-Ukrainian war will end once the aggressor-state returns all of the occupied territories, including Crimea, and pays reparation, said Dmitry Kuleba, Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, as cited by RBC-Ukraine.
The vice prime minister said that the full extent of the damage caused by Russia’s invasion of the Donbas has not yet been determined.
“Factories there have been ripped apart and taken away, mines there have been flooded, and if there is an ecological catastrophe – all of these figures need to be calculated,” he observed.
He added that he supports the idea of normalizing relations with Russia, but only after the aggressor-state “pays the price” of its actions.
“I am in favor of the war with Russia ending. I am in favor of, in the long-term, somehow normalizing our relations, but it won’t be according to the principle ‘took and forgot’… The end of the war will be money paid for the aggression, and the return of Crimea, no matter how long it takes,” Kuleba emphasized.
According to him, the global community has adopted the “Baltic model” with respect to Crimea, just like with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which were captured by the Soviet Union. The West did not recognize these countries as part of the Soviet Union, but it continued to cooperate with the Red Empire in other areas.
“The war started with Crimea, the war will end with Crimea. And in this war we will fight for Crimea. By fight, I mean primarily through political and economic means,” the vice premier said.
He added that the peninsula will be returned to Ukraine once Russia has been utterly weakened, at which point Crimea will “simply slip out of its weakened hands”.