BERLIN (AP) – The Group of Seven major industrialized countries on Thursday issued a strong condemnation of what it called “occupation” of the ongoing Crimean peninsula by Russia, seven years after Moscow annexed it from Ukraine.
Foreign ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States said in a joint statement that Russia’s actions continue to “undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence”.
“We unequivocally denounce Russia’s temporary occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol,” said the seven countries. “Russia’s attempts to legitimize it are not, and will not be, recognized.”
They accused Russia of human rights abuses on the peninsula and asked that international monitors have access there.
Moscow argued that Crimea was incorporated in 2014 after the vast majority of local residents voted to join Russia weeks after the removal of the former Ukrainian president friend of Russia, although most of the world rejected the referendum as illegitimate.
Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated his birthday by speaking to residents of Crimea via a video link and also attended a concert in Moscow that marked the event.
“It is a holiday for our entire vast country,” he said at the Luzhniki sports arena. “It is the restoration of historic justice. Every inch of that land is soaked with the blood of Russian and Soviet soldiers, this land is sacred to Russia. “
The Black Sea peninsula became part of Ukraine in 1954, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred jurisdiction from Russia, a move that was a mere formality until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, meaning that Crimea landed in Ukraine independent.
The G-7 statement also cited Russia’s role in the ongoing conflict between pro-Moscow separatists and the government in eastern Ukraine.
“We ask the Russian Federation to stop fueling the conflict by providing financial and military support to the armed formations it supports in eastern Ukraine, as well as granting Russian citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens,” they said.
The G-7 called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict that implements a series of agreements signed in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
Russia was suspended from the Group of Eight, as it was then, in 2014, because of its actions in Ukraine.