Poroshenko: Ukraine will not sell the Crimea in return for a 'good solution' in the Donbas
The President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, said that the question of the ownership of the Crimea is not negotiable and the option to exchange the Peninsula for the settlement of the situation in the Donbas region is unacceptable.
"We will never trade the Crimea for a solution regarding the Donbass region. The Crimea is a Ukrainian territory," Poroshenko said during the 13th Annual Meeting of the Yalta European Strategy, September 16, 2016 in Kyiv.
According to him, a dangerous precedent such as the legalization of the annexation of the Crimea by Russia "should not happen in principle." As Poroshenko noted, the repressive policy of Russian leadership in the occupied Crimea makes the Peninsula a concentration camp.
"We have no right to forget about the Crimea. Under the temporary occupation, Russia makes this Ukrainian Peninsula into a huge military base, arbitrarily changing the strategic balance in the Black and Mediterranean Seas in their favor. And for those who believe in international law, human rights and common European values, the Crimea has turned into a real concentration camp, according to the ‘best standards’ of repression and the Soviet style of punitive medicine," the President said.
On the 15th of September, 2016 the United Nations reported that the human rights situation in the annexed Crimea continues to deteriorate with the subsequent administrative integration of the Peninsula in the Southern Federal District of Russia.
According to the report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the situation in Ukraine, during the period from mid-May to mid-August 2016, the situation in the Crimea and around the Peninsula was further aggravated after the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) stated they arrested a group of "Ukrainian saboteurs" on the Peninsula on the 10th of August, 2016. The Russian authorities claimed that these people were planning terrorist attacks in the Crimea on behalf of the Ukrainian security services. Ukraine denies the allegations and believes they are being provoked by Moscow.
Human rights activists have repeatedly reported human right violations in the Crimea after its unlawful annexation by Russia in 2014. The ruling authorities in Peninsula rejects these statements.