Ukraine and the international community must end Russia’s attempts to conduct economic activity in occupied Crimea, Foreign Ministry says

The security environment in Ukraine and across the wider world remains fraught, and it is shifting rapidly and at high intensity. Ukraine’s partners broadly recognize that the country is now defending not just itself but the foundational principles of international law. Consolidating the efforts of the state with the backing of international partners is therefore essential to holding the aggressor to account.

Yevhen Perebyinis, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister, made the case at the International Forum of the Crimea Platform Expert Network.

“Countering Russia’s attempts to exploit temporarily occupied Crimea for illicit economic activity remains an important line of effort. Through the coordinated work of the Foreign Ministry, law enforcement agencies, and our international partners, we have achieved concrete results in exposing and documenting schemes to ship grain illegally through the ports. We have also secured sanctions against the vessels, companies, and individuals involved,” he said.

Also on the agenda is preventing Russia from legitimizing its occupation through the spheres of education and science. The world must keep the aggressor’s institutions in the occupied territories from forging ties with educational establishments elsewhere. “This undermines the policy of non-recognition, which remains one of the key levers of pressure on the aggressor state.”

The Deputy Minister stressed that Ukrainian diplomacy presses on in its effort to secure the return of the Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, and of Crimea’s indigenous peoples.

“The Crimean Tatars have become one of the occupation authorities’ foremost targets. That is why Ukraine continues its work internationally to have the 1944 deportation of the Qırımlı recognized as an act of genocide, and to make the world aware of the forms persecution takes in temporarily occupied Crimea today,” he noted.

Perebyinis emphasized that, where the occupied territories are concerned, the support and advocacy of international figures, human rights defenders, and civic leaders is indispensable to restoring a just peace. The International Forum of the Crimea Platform Expert Network, he said, has accordingly become one of the principal arenas for shaping the international conversation on Crimea and Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories.

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