Plans imposing illegitimate government on Crimea cannot be carried out - Russian permanent representative in Geneva

MOSCOW, March 19 (Itar-Tass) - Russia’s permanent representative to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva Aleksei Borodavkin said plans to impose the illegitimate Ukrainian government on Crimea cannot be carried out. The human rights situation in Ukraine is explosive, Borodavkin said. “Since the crisis ‘Maidan’ nationalists have committed murders, tortures, arbitrary detentions, and extrajudicial killings.” “The wave of violence spread the eastern areas. We can watch the Right Sector’s actions in Kharkov, Donetsk and Lugansk where armed groups attack ralliers. Several people died and some of them are injured,” Borodavkin said. “The new Ukrainian authorities continue political repressions against undesirable parties. Reprisals are threatened against their families. Psychological pressure and violence is put on disloyal mass media. Several journalists and bloggers are attacked and tortured. Television companies are seized arbitrarily. Kiev blocks off the transmission of Russian television channels on the territory of Ukraine by violating the right to freedom of mass media,” the Russian diplomat said. “We’re indignant by the fact that UN Assistant Secretary-General Ivan Simonovic left for Ukraine to collect facts of human rights violations and did not condemn radicals’ atrocities and the Kiev authorities’ actions,” he said. “A propaganda campaign was launched to discredit the March 16 referendum in Crimea where over 95% of participants in the referendum voted for the accession to the Russian Federation. The Crimean multinational people determined its fate. However, someone tries to deprive the Crimean people of this right and wants to impose the illegitimate Kiev government on it,” Borodavkin said. At the same time, the diplomat said Russia believed that Ukraine should be a normal and stable state. To this end, it is necessary to take several measures - to recognise and respect Crimea’s right to determine its fate in compliance with the results of the referendum; to respect the interests of the multinational Ukraine people; to support the people’s drive for living in security in accordance with its customs and traditions; to have free access to culture and maintain broad relations with compatriots and neighbours; to prevent the neo-Nazi ideology from spreading; to dissociate oneself from ultranationalists and curb attempts to destabilise different regions of the country; to confiscate illegal weapons; to free illegally seized buildings, streets and squares; and to investigate acts of violence in December 2013 - January 2014. Borodavkin called for convening a constitutional assembly with the involvement of all Ukrainian regions in order to prepare a new federative constitution, to ensure the supremacy of law, human rights and ethnic minorities, as well as the freedom of the speech and the activity of political parties, mass media, to restore Ukraine as a democratic sovereign federative state with a neutral military-political status. The Russian language should be given the status of a second state language in compliance with the European Convention on Regional and Minorities Languages. Regions should be given broad federative powers in the areas of economy, finances, social welfare, education, external inter-regional relations, he said. “Based on these principles Russia is ready to cooperate with the states that want to help settle the crisis in Ukraine not in word but in deed,” Borodavkin said.