Ukraine`s Minister of Justice Pavlo Petrenko has told Ukrainian TV Channel 5 that the evidence collected by the Ukrainian side refutes the Russian Federation`s arguments in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the Crimea annexation case.
”I can say unequivocally the pieces of evidence submitted regarding Crimea refute all those stories of that [Russian] side that they had allegedly been supported by Crimeans and `nothing had been plotted in advance`, and that the `little green men` were local militia. These are complete lies. Therefore, very intensive work is ongoing in the field of `legal war.` I am convinced that we will succeed,” Petrenko said.
”We have good news from the European Court of Human Rights, where Ukraine has already filed additional explanations on the merits of the Crimea case. Plenty of evidence has been submitted to the ECHR. I can announce that next week there will be the presentation of a series of evidence that we have collected together with our colleagues from law enforcement agencies, and there will be the witnesses who agreed to publicly testify on the facts we had submitted to the ECHR,” he added.
See also: EU prolongs sanctions over Crimea crisis for another 6 months
Memo. Russia annexed Ukraine`s Crimea in March 2014 after its troops had occupied the peninsula. An illegal referendum was set up to legitimize the ”accession” to Russia. De-facto Crimean authorities reported that allegedly 96.77% of the Crimean population had supported the move.
On March 18, 2014, the so-called agreement on the accession of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol to Russia was signed in the Kremlin. The West did not recognize the annexation in response to which sanctions against Russia were introduced.
Ukraine`s parliament voted to designate February 20, 2014, as the official date when the temporary occupation of Crimea began.
See also: Russian aggression against Ukraine, international law and global security: 25 key theses
