Maria Zakharova
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova replied to the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrey Melnik, who declared Berlin's “moral responsibility” to Kiev for the Nazi occupation of Crimea, in connection with which the European country should make every effort to return the peninsula. She wrote about this on Facebook.
The representative of the department said that Melnik did not fully develop his idea. According to her, the diplomat forgot that at that time the region was part of the RSFSR, that is, Russia. “And if someone is owed for this, then Moscow, not Kiev,” Zakharova noted.
She added that since Berlin “demolishes” such historical allusions of the Ukrainian ambassador, Russia will also develop them. “If we talk about the modern moral responsibility of Berlin to Kiev, it would be better to attribute it to the support of the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine, the failure of the Ukrainian leadership to fulfill its obligations under the Minsk agreements, violation of freedom of speech and infringement of the rights of indigenous peoples,” the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman concluded.
Miller, in an article for the Berliner Zeitung, called the assistance to Germany in the return of the Crimea her duty for the occupation of the country during the Great Patriotic War. According to him, Germany is responsible for the millions of killed Ukrainians, including during ethnic cleansing on the peninsula.
During the Great Patriotic War and until 1954, the Crimean peninsula was part of the RSFSR. It finally became part of Russia in 2014 after a referendum in which the majority of the inhabitants of the peninsula supported this decision. Ukraine considers this territory annexed and accuses Moscow of human rights violations. The Russian authorities have denied these allegations.
