Arseniy Yatsenyuk: Under no circumstances Ukraine will acknowledge annexation of Crimea

“I wish to reaffirm the position of the Government of Ukraine – Ukraine will never acknowledge the annexation of Crimea, under no circumstances,” the Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk stressed on the outcomes of a meeting with the U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, April 22.  

“We demand from our Russian neighbors to immediately withdraw their special forces, which are being deployed on the territory of Eastern Ukraine, to withdraw their army from Crimea and turn over the disgraceful page of capturing the independent Ukraine by the Russian troops,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk stressed.

According to him, the Government of Ukraine considers “in the modern century, in the modern world no country should be able to behave like armed bandits”: “The more so is for the states being permanent members of the UN Security Council and that used to be the part of Great Eight”.

Russia must meet its international obligations instead of “behaving as gangsters”, Arseniy Yatsenyuk says.

The Government realizes that “everything going on in the East and supported by the Russian Federation is aimed at failure of the presidential elections in Ukraine as well”.

“The task of the Government of Ukraine is to hold fair and transparent elections,” he emphasized.

He noted that the presidential candidates represented the whole spectrum of the political parties in Ukraine and each of them could receive relevant support of the electorate: “Ukraine needs a legitimately elected president, what Russia doesn’t need”.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk explains the elections would be carried out with participation of the OSCE observer mission and the international community: “They must be fair, transparent, open and objective”.

“In Ukraine there should appear a new president who advocates the course of reforms, corruption fight, including changes to the Constitution of Ukraine, the course towards European integration, energy independence, the course of the democracy and independency of the Ukrainian state,” the Head of Government said.