Polish proposal on Crimea ‘absurd’ – Kremlin

Russian territory is not up for discussion, spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said

Moscow has reacted strongly to a Polish suggestion to place Crimea under UN administration for 20 years. No Russian territory is up for discussion, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, in response to the proposal.

“Russian territory and Russian regions cannot be the subject of any discussions or transfer to anyone,” Peskov told reporters on Friday, describing the idea as “absurd.”

The historically Russian peninsula was reassigned to Ukraine in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and was claimed by Kiev after its declaration of independence in 1991.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski on Thursday floated the notion of making Crimea a UN mandate territory, describing it as “symbolically important for Russia” and “strategically important for Ukraine.” According to Sikorski, the UN mission could prepare the territory for a referendum in up to 20 years, once it determines who would be legally eligible residents.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also publicly rejected the proposal, insisting that Ukraine’s territorial integrity “cannot be a subject of discussion or compromise.”

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Residents of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia in March 2014, shortly after the Maidan coup overthrew the Ukrainian government in favor of militant nationalists. 

Kiev has continued to claim Crimea, as well as the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, which joined Russia in September 2023. Moscow has repeatedly said that none of these territories are up for negotiation. 

“Crimeans returned to Russia a decade ago and have no need for Western meddlers such as Sikorski,” Russian lawmaker Leonid Ivlev told reporters on Friday. The retired Air Force major-general proposed to put western Poland under a UN mandate instead.

“Crimea is historically and rightfully Russian territory, we live on our own land,” Ivlev said. “The Poles can’t say the same. Sikorski should remember that Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, East Brandenburg, and the free city of Danzig were transferred to Poland by Stalin. Maybe we should put these former German lands under a UN mandate and then hold a referendum there,” he suggested.

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, Poland received former German territories up to the Oder-Neisse line as compensation for ceding to the USSR the lands it had seized in the 1920s. Those territories became part of the present-day Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.