Third Summit of International Crimea Platform opens in Kyiv

The Third Summit of the International Crimea Platform has kicked off in the city of Kyiv today. It is dedicated to Ukraine’s vision of the future of the temporarily occupied Crimea and the matters of security in the Black Sea region.

The Summit is taking place in a hybrid format and has opened with a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

The Head of State started his speech with a story of Lenie Umerova, a 25-year-old Crimean Tatar who went to the temporarily occupied Crimea to visit her cancer-sick father but ended up in the Moscow-based detention center, and Russian authorities are planning to imprison her for a period of 25 years.

“This is just one of the numerous examples of repression by the occupiers against Ukrainian citizens in Crimea, against the Crimean Tatar people, against the Muslim community of Crimea, against men, women – very young and those in advanced years... It depends on our solidarity with you, when Lenie Umerova will be free again, same as Nariman Dzhelal, Vladyslav Yesypenko, Server Mustafayev, Iryna Danylovych, and many other people, whom Russia deprived of their freedom in the seized Crimea,” Zelensky noted.

President of Hungary Katalin Novák, President of the Republic of Lithuania Gitanas Nausėda, President of the Portuguese Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Željko Komšić came to Kyiv to attend the Summit.

A reminder that last year the Global South countries joined the Crimea Platform, and now it consists of 61 countries and international organizations.