At a YES meeting in Kyiv, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski proposed transferring Crimea under a UN mandate to "prepare a fair referendum" on the status of the peninsula. In his opinion, this procedure could be postponed for 20 years.
Sikorski emphasized that Crimea was symbolically important for Russia and the country's president, Vladimir Putin. Crimea also has strategic value for Ukraine, Sikorski added.
"Therefore, I do not see how they will be able to reach an agreement without demilitarizing Crimea. We could transfer it under a UN mandate with a mission to prepare a fair referendum after verifying who the legal residents are, and so on," the Polish Foreign Minister proposed, adding that this procedure could be postponed for 20 years.
A UN mandate is a long-term international mission authorized by the UN General Assembly or the UN Security Council. Such mandates are usually associated with peacekeeping operations.
In early September, Putin said in an interview with the Mongolian newspaper Onodor that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had actually given away Crimea to Ukraine which was part of the RSFSR.
"The borders of the union republics were drawn quite arbitrarily, based on "proletarian necessity." Thus, the industrial Donbass, populated mainly by Russians, was transferred to Ukraine (…) In 1954, Khrushchev effectively gave Crimea, which was part of the RSFSR, to Ukraine," he noted.
President Putin and other officials representing the Russian administration have repeatedly affirmed before that the status of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR), as well as the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions should be enshrined in international treaties as regions of Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a row with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski during his visit to Kyiv, Polish publication Onet said.
The atmosphere between Zelensky and Sikorski was extremely tense, "one could even talk about a quarrel," the publication said.
The Poles were surprised by the style in which Zelensky tried to talk to Sikorski. The Ukrainian president immediately accused Poland of not supporting Ukraine in negotiations on joining the European Union. The head of the Polish Foreign Ministry responded that his country needed a decade to join, and the deadline proposed by Zelensky's office was "unrealistic."
Zelensky then called on Poland to transfer more military equipment to Kyiv, as well as to shoot down missiles and drones over Ukraine, but Sikorski responded by saying that it would be impossible to do it without NATO decision.