Poland suggests transferring Crimea under UN mandate for another referendum

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.

Photo: wikimedia.org by Alexxx1979, CC BY-SA 3.0

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.

Zelensky had a fight with Sikorski in Kyiv

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.

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Radosław Tomasz Sikorski better known as Radek Sikorski, is a Polish politician, journalist and statesman who has served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland in Donald Tusk's cabinet since 2023, previously holding the office between 2007 and 2014. He was a Member of the European Parliament between 2019 and 2023. Earlier he was Marshal of the Sejm from 2014 to 2015. He previously served as Deputy Minister of National Defence (1992) in Jan Olszewski's cabinet, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs (1998–2001) in Jerzy Buzek's cabinet and Minister of National Defence (2005–2007) in the cabinets of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and Jarosław Kaczyński.

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Crimea is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukraine. To the east, the Crimean Bridge, constructed in 2018, spans the Strait of Kerch, linking the peninsula with Krasnodar Krai in Russia. The Arabat Spit, located to the northeast, is a narrow strip of land that separates the Syvash lagoons from the Sea of Azov. Across the Black Sea to the west lies Romania and to the south is Turkey. The population is 2.4 million, and the largest city is Sevastopol. The region became part of Russia in 2014.