Europe will not support any U.S. move to recognize Russian control over occupied Crimea and will not pressure Kyiv to accept it, the Financial Times (FT) reported on April 24, citing undisclosed Western officials.
The Trump administration's final proposal for ending Russia's all-out war against Ukraine reportedly included U.S. de jure recognition of Moscow's control over Crimea, along with de facto recognition of its partial occupation of other Ukrainian regions — Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on April 23 that Washington is not forcing Ukraine to recognize Crimea as Russian. He then blamed Ukraine for not fighting back when Russia illegally seized the peninsula in 2014.
An unnamed senior European official told the FT that the Trump administration had already been informed that European countries would not recognize Crimea as Russian. Major European NATO powers should "discourage" the U.S. from doing so unilaterally, according to the official.
Earlier this week, top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas said that the European Union will never recognize the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula as legally Russian.
Recognition of the annexation would contradict a decade of bipartisan U.S. policy and a 2014 United Nations General Assembly resolution, in which 100 member states declared the seizure illegal.
Trump's claim that Crimea was taken without force is false. During Russia's 2014 annexation, armed Russian troops in unmarked uniforms seized Ukrainian government buildings, military installations, and blockaded bases.
Following the U.S. president's remarks, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on April 23 that Ukraine will always act in accordance with its Constitution, sharing a 2018 U.S. declaration denouncing Russian occupation of Crimea and reaffirming Ukraine's territorial integrity.
Natalia Yermak
(Updated: )
