Kremlin dismisses Lukashenko’s Crimea deal claims

Moscow did not discuss any “long-term lease” agreement for the Crimean peninsula with Kiev in 2022, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday in response to comments made by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

“No, this is not true,” Peskov told reporters. “Crimea is an inalienable part of the Russian Federation. It is a Russian region.”

Speaking to the Russia 1 TV channel earlier in the day, Lukashenko claimed that during the Minsk-mediated negotiations between Moscow and Kiev in Türkiye last year, the two sides had discussed the option of leasing the peninsula to Russia.

The Belarusian leader stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin had shown him a draft document which was allegedly provisionally accepted by both Moscow and Kiev. Lukashenko described the treaty as a “fine contract.”

“It was a good project, and they were already discussing that the foreign ministers would initial the treaty and then the heads of states would decide and sign it and so on. It was a good process, but [the Ukrainians] dropped out of it,” Lukashenko claimed.

Crimea officially became part of Russia in 2014 following an armed coup in Kiev which was rejected by the residents of the peninsula. Crimeans held a public referendum in which the overwhelming majority of the peninsula’s population voted in favor of becoming a Russian region.

The current government in Kiev, as well as its Western backers, however, have refused to accept the results and still consider the peninsula to be Ukrainian territory.