Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Says Kyiv Has No Right to Crimea and Sevastopol

Former Prime Minister of Ukraine Nikolai Azarov stated in an interview with URA.RU that Kiev has no right to lay claim to Crimea and Sevastopol .

According to the politician, before the events of 2014, there were no territorial disputes between Russia and Ukraine, and all territorial issues were regulated by the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation of 1997.

In 2019, President Petro Poroshenko and the Verkhovna Rada denounced this document, the former prime minister recalled. "Since there is no agreement, it means there is no state border that would be regulated by legal agreements," Azarov said.

Earlier, the head of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, proposed recognizing the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev's decision in 1954 as illegal. According to him, joining the Ukrainian Republic led to the peninsula being torn away from Russia and "obsessive attempts to Ukrainize its inhabitants."