It is time for Western countries and international organizations to end their silence and publicly voice their position on the water blockade of Crimea imposed by Ukraine, the head of the Crimean parliament's committee on people's diplomacy and interethnic relations Yuri Hempel said.
Earlier, the head of the Crimean parliament Vladimir Konstantinov said that he would initiate an appeal to the Russian State Prosecutor's Office to institute criminal proceedings for attempted genocide against the organizers of the peninsula's water blockade.
"The Kiev authorities' angry attitude towards Crimea and the Crimeans is well understood by us, but the question is why are Western countries and international organizations, which like so much to identify themselves as defenders of democratic rights and values in the world, keeping silent? Now it is time to break their demonstrative silence and publicly voice their position on the water blockade of Crimea," Hempel told RIA Novosti.
According to him, otherwise, further silence will be regarded as support for Kiev's "misanthropic policy".
Previously, Ukraine provided up to 85 percent of Crimea's freshwater needs through the Severo-Krymsky Canal, which comes from the Dnieper River. However, after Crimea's reunification with Russia, the supply of water through the canal to the republic was completely stopped unilaterally. The water supply issue was resolved by extracting water from underground sources and naturally filled reservoirs, which have become significantly shallow over the past year due to low precipitation. Due to the shortage of water in a number of regions of Crimea, a regime of water supply to homes was introduced, the water supply of Simferopol was mainly reoriented to artesian sources.
Crimea became a Russian region after the March 2014 referendum, in which an overwhelming majority of voters in the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol voted in favor of becoming part of Russia. The Crimean authorities held the referendum after the coup d'état in Ukraine in February 2014. Ukraine still considers Crimea its own, but temporarily occupied territory. The Russian leadership has repeatedly stated that the residents of Crimea voted democratically, in full compliance with international law and the UN Charter, to reunite with Russia. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the issue of Crimea is "closed".
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Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from RIA Novosti