President Volodymyr Zelensky opened the summit with a message: everything started with Crimea – it will end there. With the deoccupation of Ukrainian territories.
This year, the summit was held in an online format. Only the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, personally came to Ukraine: he called for the dismantling of Nord Stream 2. Due to the accession of African and South American countries, the total number of participants increased to almost 60, whereas in 2021 there were 46 representatives.
The Crimean Platform was attended by 40 presidents and prime ministers. In particular, Anthony Blinken, Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, leaders of the Baltic states.
The focus of the summit was russia’s use of Crimea for a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to Zelenskyi, since February 24, the russian federation has fired 750 missiles from the peninsula – and the liberation of Crimea will be a “historic anti-war step”.
Scholz and Trudeau said they agreed on new military aid to Ukraine. Sweden announced a new “comprehensive package” of assistance.
NATO is constantly asking its allies to give Ukraine weapons – more and as soon as possible, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg assured the participants of the summit.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Crimea is illegally occupied and should return to Ukraine, and the war should end with a just peace based on the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
The partners agreed with Zelensky’s red line that there will be no “surrender” of Ukrainian territories in exchange for peace, according to the Advisor to the Head of the President’s Office. According to him, if yesterday the world was skeptical about the possibility of deoccupation of Crimea, now it is one of the key and mandatory elements of the global agenda.
The Crimean Platform itself will remain a permanent format of the dialog on liberation of the occupied peninsula. Zelensky announced that the parliamentary assembly of the platform will be held offline in Croatia this fall.
