Russia’s defense minister had some choice words about what would have happened if the peninsula had stayed with Ukraine.
Had Moscow not reabsorbed Crimea in 2014, radical groups from Ukraine as well as Western private military soldiers would have made it their stronghold, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has claimed.
Speaking as part of an interview with Moscow newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published on Monday, the senior official said that “if all these people – Ukrainian neo-fascists, ultranationalists, extremists and mercenaries from European countries and the United States – had come to Crimea after the coup d’état in Kiev, as they were about to do, I assure you, no one would have thought any less.”
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According to him, it would have created a hotbed of tension that the world would not be able to extinguish. “We still see the consequences of the attempts of these non-humans, together with Ukrainian troops, to impose their order in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” Shoigu said.
Crimea was reabsorbed by Russia in March 2014 following a referendum. Ukraine and most other nations in the world have not recognized the vote as legitimate. It came shortly after the events of the Maidan, when violent street protests toppled Kiev’s democratically elected government.
Ukraine considers the peninsula to be part of its territory and illegally occupied by Russia.
Speaking last week at his annual press conference, President Vladimir Putin said the coup forced Moscow to take action. “How could we say no to Sevastopol and Crimea, to the people who live there? How could we not take them under our protection, under our wing? Impossible. We were put in a situation where we could not do otherwise,” he said.