Summit of The 'Crimea Platform' Will Take Place on October 24-25 in Prague, Czech Republic

Ukraine is preparing for the 'Crimea Platform' summit, which will be held in the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague, at the end of October. The number of participants is 'substantial'.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky announced this in his traditional address.

'We are also preparing for a new summit of our Crimea Platform - the parliamentary level of the Crimea Platform. The number of participants is substantial. The summit will take place in the Czech Republic. I am grateful to everyone in the world who has joined us and is ready to work at the parliamentary diplomacy level for the sake of security and peace throughout Europe, without any exceptions for any parts of our continent', - emphasized Zelensky.

In an interview with the Ukrainian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Speaker of the lower house of the Czech Parliament, Marketa Pekarova Adamova, noted that the main goal of the platform is to 'gather all the speakers of parliaments and representatives of their countries.'

It is expected that the general list of participants will include representatives of 40 countries and 5 parliamentary assemblies, including the PACE and NATO. In addition to European countries, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Canada, and the United Kingdom will join the list of participating countries. Japan and New Zealand will join the summit in an online format.

In her interview, Marketa Pekarova Adamova emphasized separately that the West's response to Russia's occupation of Crimea in 2014 was insufficient, appeared as 'weakness' of democratic countries, and thus encouraged Putin to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

'We definitely made the wrong decision not to pressure Russia because our response was insufficient. And I am almost sure that now not only I but also other leaders know very well that it was a mistake,' said the Speaker, adding that in the Czech Republic, there was an opinion that 'Crimea was just the beginning for Russia.'

However, according to Pekarova Adamova, 'most of the votes were only for certain sanctions, but this was not enough. And for Russia, it certainly looked like weakness, so they decided to do what they did, what they are still doing.'

It is worth recalling that the international Crimea Platform is an internationally initiated consultation and coordination format launched by Ukraine. The platform began its work at the inaugural summit on August 23, 2021, in Kyiv. It was then that a joint declaration of the platform participants was approved.

The main directions of the work of the Crimea Platform have become the concentration of international attention on Russia's occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and the strengthening of international pressure on the Kremlin, including to prevent human rights violations in the occupied territories of Ukraine and protect all victims of the occupation regime.

Since the beginning of Russia's occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014, Ukrainian citizens of various ethnic backgrounds, including Crimean Tatars who did not leave the occupied territory, have been under constant pressure from Russian security forces.

Earlier, the Ministry for the Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories reported that over 9.5 years of occupation in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, over 5,000 human rights violations have been registered.