Crimea is Russian territory, and the Russian Constitution excludes the possibility of discussing the fate of any Russian region, Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing, Interfax reports.
So he answered the question whether there are options for reaching agreements on Crimea, taking into account the position of Ukraine, which was expressed at the talks in Istanbul on March 29. Representatives of Kyiv proposed to include negotiations on the status of Crimea in the agreement with Russia.
According to him, so far the positive thing is that the Ukrainian side has begun to “concretely formulate and put on paper what it proposes”, otherwise there are no breakthroughs he did not notice and believes that “there is still a very, very long work to be done.”
In Istanbul, the Ukrainian side proposed to include in the draft agreement with Russia a clause stating that the dispute over Crimea and Sevastopol would be discussed at bilateral negotiations, and the final decision would be made by the presidents of the two countries, the leader of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said a day earlier. He noted that this proposal does not correspond to the position of Moscow.
Summing up the results of the Istanbul meeting, Medinsky said that “instead of two days, one-day negotiations have ended, the delegations have already left for their centers to clarify and agree on their positions.”