Crimea's new Constitution which envisages the election of Head of the Republic by Members of Parliament and keeps the State Council's personnel-related powers intact will be adopted by the Crimean parliament, most likely, before April 10, with the holding of a referendum on the matter being out of question, Grigory Ioffe, head of the Constitution commission and First Deputy Speaker og the State Council of Crimea, told the newspaper Kommersant in an interview published Monday.
"I think we shall propose holding a special session of the Crimean parliament and adopt a new Constitution sometime before April 10. This done, we shall be already able to feel that Crimea is a full-fledged constituent entity of the Russian Federation," the head of the Constitution commission said.
West recognized Maidan; more reason to recognize Crimea's reunion with Russia - Lavrov
Since the West recognized "Maidan", it is simply bound to recognize Crimea's reunification with Russia as a reality, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the national 'Channel One' television channel.
"I regret to say that this is, as I see it, a deliberate stance (that the West ignores the crimes committed by "maidan"). Right at the beginning of those November events, when after the absolutely legitimate decision of the incumbent Ukrainian president to put off, not cancel, the signing of an agreement with the European Union, 'maidan' protest erupted and, very quickly, militants from the Right Sector and other radical groups moved in.
We cautioned Western countries against encouraging those processes. Their response was pretty vague, that those were the legal manifestations of the civil position of the people. Back then it was already clear that they [the processes] were turning downright anti-constitutional and anti-government in nature".
"Later it all shaped into a coup d'etat, staged literally within 24 hours after President Yanukovych and the opposition signed an agreement in the presence of the foreign ministers of three European Union countries. Then they immediately declared that a revolution had taken place and that a new reality had to be recognized".
"Without comparing the legitimacy of what happened in Maidan and in Crimea and I am convinced that the former is illegitimate and the latter is the freely expressed choice of the people with such a huge percentage of voters supporting reunification with Russia that there is no disputing its legitimacy, or going into the essence of the matter, it would still be wrong to say that the maidan events are a reality and the events in Crimea cannot be recognized as reality. From a diplomatic viewpoint, that doesn't hold water," Lavrov concluded.
Russia 'had no other choice' than to accept Crimea - Lavrov
Russia did not give much thought to what the Western reaction would be when it accepted Crimea's bid for re-unification, because it had no other choice, Russia's foreign chief Sergei Lavrov said on a Channel One TV show. "We didn't bother reflecting about what the reaction would be," Mr. Lavrov said.
"We had no other choice. The choice we eventually made came from our history, international law, Russian statehood and our responsibility for the lives of those ethnic Russians who found themselves stranded abroad in a single day".
He said the decision to give historically Russian-majority Crimea to Ukraine was not made in compliance with international law.
He recalled the 1991 Belavezha Accords that finalized the decision to dissolve the Soviet Union and fix the borders of its member states. The deal was signed at a meeting in the Belarusian part of the Belavezha reserve by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
"Everyone knows how those Belavezha accords were negotiated and how every advocate of today's international laws applauded them. No one ever doubted their legitimacy back then," Lavrov noted.
