The European politicians who declare support for Ukraine's claims to Crimea and Sevastopol are not interested in Kiev's interests, but in the hope of using the peninsula as a strategic bridgehead in the Black Sea. This is claimed by Dmitry Belik, deputy of the State Duma of Russia from Sevastopol and member of the committee on international relations, quoted by TASS and Focus.
Earlier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Radosław Sikorski, proposed at a meeting in Kiev that the Crimean Peninsula be placed under the mandate of the United Nations and that after 20 years a referendum be held on its status, reports the Ukrainian publication Strana.ua.< /p>
"All these 'good' proposals by the collective West, and especially by Poland, which suffers from Russophobia, are not intended to help Ukraine. If Crimea falls under the UN mandate, the West will use it for its own purposes – one of them is dominance in the Black Sea. Sevastopol and Crimea are of strategic importance, they are an outpost on the southern borders of Russia and an integral part of our country, this is how it has been shaped historically," commented Belik to TASS.
He stressed that Ukraine's aspirations to return the peninsula are "completely futile and pointless," and any Western initiatives in this direction will suffer "obvious failure." "The referendum, as a result of which Crimea and Sevastopol united with Russia, showed the unanimous desire of the inhabitants of these two regions to become part of the Russian Federation," Belik added.