Putin Claims Ukrainians And Russians Are One People
Moscow (Alliance News) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Ukrainians and Russians are a single people.
“We in Russia always thought that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. And I believe so today,” Putin told a rally on Red Square marking the first anniversary of Crimea’s “unification” with Russia.
Putin argued that Crimea and Russia did not unite for territory or strategic aims, but that the peninsula was “the source of our spirituality and statehood.”
Ukraine and the West have slapped sanctions against Russia for what they call the illegally annexation the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula and of sponsoring the subsequent uprising in eastern Ukraine, which has killed more than 6,000 people since it began in April.
Putin said that Russia will “overcome all problems and difficulties imposed on us from outside.”
In a jab at the pro-Western government in Kyiv, he said that Ukrainians will in the future give an “objective appraisal of those who led the country into today’s situation.”
Putin added that Russia will do everything to assist Ukraine and to rebuild normal relations with its western neighbour.
The Ukrainian government has condemned Russia’s policies as illegal aggression against a neighbouring state.
Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said Wednesday in Kyiv that Ukraine is preparing a case against Russia at the International Criminal Court (ICC) because of recent comments made by Putin and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Crimea.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General will hand a report of the comments, made in a recent Russian TV documentary, to the ICC in The Hague, Petrenko said in Kyiv, according to the Interfax Ukraine news agency.
In the film broadcast Sunday on Russian television, Putin said that he ordered to prepare the return of Crimea to Russia on February 23 last year, one day after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted by protesters in Kyiv.
Also on Wednesday, Russia’s military widened their large-scale exercises all over the country. Some 76,000 members of the armed forces, 65 battleships and more than 200 aircraft take part in the drills, defence minister Shoigu said.
Moscow and Kyiv also continued to spar over the peace treaty the sides signed last month.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complained that Kyiv had “flagrantly violated” the agreement by putting political autonomy for districts held by pro-Russian separatist on hold until after local elections.
“I called upon my German and French colleagues to launch a protest against the Ukrainians,” Lavrov said in Moscow.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande brokered the deal signed on February 27 in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
An amendment passed by the parliament in Kyiv on Tuesday stipulates that the separatist territories may get political autonomy only after they hold local elections under Ukrainian law. Lawmakers also voted to label those districts “temporarily occupied territories.”
Separatist leaders condemned the move on Wednesday, saying that they are suspending all cooperation as long as the decision remains in place.
“We agreed to special (political) status of the Donbass inside a reformed Ukraine, albeit our people want full independence. But Ukraine has not been reformed. As before, it is governed by an oligarchic clique that does not give a damn about the people,” Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky said in a joint statement.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry defended the parliamentary decisions as a “testimony to Ukraine’s adherence to the Minsk agreements.”
The parliamentary vote in Kyiv marks the first steps in implementing the political part of February’s agreement, as a ceasefire between government troops and separatist forces is largely holding and both sides say that they completed the withdrawal of heavy weapons.
Copyright dpa
