“A crime is a crime, no matter how much time has passed. The crime must be punished, order must be restored. Crimea must be returned to Ukraine”, – Dmytro Kuleba, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

In his speech, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the participants of the third summit of the Crimea Platform and stressed that it was President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy who broke the silence on the Crimea issue by creating the Crimea Platform, dedicated to returning the issue of Crimea to the international community’s agenda.

Kuleba commented on Putin’s strategy to avoid discussing the Crimea issue and force the world to accept the de-facto status-quo. The Minister also stressed that the events taking place in the occupied Crimea are a crime that must be and will eventually be punished. 

Dmytro Kuleba noted the increase of participants of the Crimea Platform and the growing support of the international community and invited new participants to this year’s summit: Bahrain, Serbia, East Timor (Timor-Leste), the UAE, the Danube Commission, the World Tourism Organisation, and UNESCO. 

At the end of his speech, the Minister stressed the immutability of the goal of deoccupation of Crimea and all temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and thanked the participants for their commitment to achieving the common goal.