Yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky officially launched the “Crimea Platform summit” in Kiev, described as an aggressive effort to mobilize international support for Ukraine regaining control of Crimea and Sevastopol from Russia, which it accuses of illegally annexing them in 2014. According to Euronews and Associated Press, representatives of 46 countries, including 30 NATO members, were in attendance, although most at the level of defense or foreign ministers. In his inaugural speech, Zelensky vowed that he would do “everything possible to return Crimea,” so that it, together with Ukraine, “becomes part of Europe.” First announced by Zelensky in Sept. of 2020, this initiative had to be postponed twice, because it wasn’t clear what international support it would get,
Charging that Russia has fully militarized Crimea, and transformed it “into a territory where the most basic rights and freedoms of humans are regularly violated,” Zelensky warned attendees that Russia’s occupation of Crimea called into question the “efficiency of the whole international security system.” If confidence in that system weren’t restored, he added ominously, then no country could be sure that its own territory wouldn’t also be occupied.” The “international community” must respond, he demanded. “We want to see the active efforts of our Western partners!” Charles Michel, president of the European Council, responded by blathering about the EU’s “unwavering” determination not to recognize the “illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol by Russia.”
