Prime Minister addressed the Crimea Platform
summit virtually today.
"I want to congratulate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
particularly for bringing us together and focusing our
attention on Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea because that
land grab in 2014 was the direct precursor to today’s war, and we
should have the humility to acknowledge that not everyone
realised the sheer enormity of what was happening at the time.
All of our countries however reacted with strength and unity
after Putin escalated his onslaught against Ukraine on the 24th
February this year, but the first act of this tragedy opened
eight years earlier – almost to the day - when Russian forces
began fanning out across Crimea, and taking control of a
peninsula seizing which constitutes 10,000 square miles of
sovereign Ukrainian territory.
At a stroke, Putin forcibly annexed the territory of a European
country – and forcibly redrew a European frontier for the
first time since 1945.
He ignored the fact that Russia itself had repeatedly recognised
Crimea as being part of Ukraine, and he broke so many
international agreements that I cannot list them all, but they
include Article 2 of
the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act and
the Russia-Ukraine Treaty of Friendship.
And ever since the annexation , the people of Crimea have endured
a brutal and systematic campaign of human rights abuses by the
Russian authorities, including the persecution of the Tatars,
arbitrary arrests, with a tenfold increase in detentions in last
year, and the restriction of land ownership to Russian citizens.
Once he had grabbed Crimea, Putin deployed more and more Russian
forces in the peninsula, turning the territory into an armed camp
from which to threaten the rest of Ukraine, and Crimea duly
became the launch pad for the invasion on 24th February. Or one
of the launch pads. And I’m afraid that all this has even greater
salience today because Putin is planning to do to parts of
Ukraine, in fact all of Ukraine, what he has done to
Crimea, and he is preparing more annexations and more sham
referendums.
So it has never been more important for all of us to stand
together in defence of the foundational principle of
international law, which is that, no territory, no country, can
acquire territory or change borders by force of arms, and it so
follows that we will never recognise Russia’s annexation of
Crimea or any other Ukrainian territory.
In the face of Putin’s assault, we must continue give our
Ukrainian friends all the military, humanitarian, economic and
diplomatic support that they need until Russia ends this hideous
war and withdraws its forces from the entirety of Ukraine.
Thank you all very much."
