US President Donald Trump may be open to the possibility of recognising Russia’s 2014 referendum in Crimea, which triggered a crisis in Kiev that led to the attacks on eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Bloomberg reported.
Kremlin press spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, has refused to comment on this specific issue, but has confirmed that the conflict in Ukraine was included on the Helsinki agenda.
The Russian president gave an account of his meeting with Trump during at a conference with top Russian ambassadors and officials at the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, but parts of his address were closed to the public.
A source at the meeting told Bloomberg that it was revealed that Trump had requested Putin not discuss the referendum idea at the press conference after the summit.
In the wake of Putin and Trump’s historic Helsinki summit, American media havebeen in overdrive to demonize the Russian leadership, including the “Donbass proposal”.
It could mean the end of the American project in Ukraine, the end of the Minsk Agreements, and the official recognition of self-determination for Donbass.
The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics seceded from Ukraine as the result of referenda held on 11 May 2014, in which 89 percent of voters with a 75 percent turnout in Donetsk and 96.2 percent of Lugansk voters with a turnout of 81 percent voted for independence from Ukraine and the formation of independent states.
These unrecognised states have withstood war waged by the US-NATO-EU-backed post-Maidan Kiev regime for more than four years now.
A new, internationally recognised referendum in Donbass would mean the end of the Second Minsk Agreement adopted in February 2015, signed by Ukraine, France, Germany, and Russia. It stipulated a package of ceasefire measures and political reforms aimed at ultimately re-integrating the Donetsk and Lugansk regions with Ukraine, but it was largely ignored by Kiev.
Any free referendum would inevitably lead to an independent Donbass, putting an end to Kiev’s war on Donbass – and the whole Western operation behind it.
Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said on Friday at the Valdai discussion club in Moscow, that Russia had offered Trump “specific proposals for resolving this question”, but did not say whether they included a referendum.
In Helsinki, President Putin pointed to a 2014 referendum held in Crimea. “We believe that we held a referendum in strict compliance with international law,” he said. “This case is closed for Russia.”
