Sergei Aksyonov: Crimea as part of Russia has overcome interethnic contradictions

For Crimea, this is a time of new opportunities, said Aksenov, answering the question about what the past 10 years have been like for Crimea and Russia. — The main thing is that all internal strife and contradictions within us, which were artificially instilled by the Kyiv authorities, have gone away. In Crimea, the national issue has always been a tool of influence and response. All Ukrainian leaders sought to sow hostility and misunderstanding here. Any actions that could, so to speak, develop into interethnic strife were supported and cultivated.

As the agency’s interlocutor noted, over the years Crimea has maintained peace, its identity and citizens’ respect for each other, including despite the difficulties that have arisen over the past decade.

And we have had to overcome many challenges over the years — from natural, spontaneous, to specific steps that the enemy took against the population: power outages, water blockade, obstruction of travel across the border, the supply of medicines and other things. Everything they could do to spoil us, they did. We successfully overcame all thisnotes the head of the region.

After the coup d’etat in Ukraine in February 2014, the authorities of Crimea and Sevastopol held a referendum on reunification with Russia, in which 96.7% and 95.6% of voters were in favor. On March 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement on the admission of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol to the Russian Federation.