The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expresses its resolute protest over the visit of the high leadership of the Russian Federation on August 17, 2015 to the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which had not been agreed with the Ukrainian side. A respective note of protest has been sent to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Therein, the Ukrainian side demanded to explain the reasons of manifest disregard of Ukrainian legislation and norms of international law by Russian president Vladimir Putin, head of Russian government Dmitry Medvedev and other high-level officials of the Russian Federation and to stop the practice of holding such visits.

Apart from outrage that such conscious and deliberate neglect of key principles of international law and Ukrainian legislation by Russian leaders causes, we once again draw attention of the Russian side to the necessity to abide by the Procedure for entry to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine and exit from it adopted by the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 367 of June 4, 2015. We recall that the violation of this Procedure envisages responsibility according to the current Ukrainian legislation.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine emphasizes that the Kremlins’ attempts to interpret these unapproved visits to Ukraine as “domestic” travel are null and void. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol are and will remain an integral part of Ukraine for the entire civilized world, which had already given due assessment of the Russian actions by imposing appropriate restrictive measures.