Exiled Soviet-era dissident tells the Guardian that for the US to turn its back on the territory would be ‘shameful’
When Mustafa Dzhemilev read the news about Donald Trump’s plan for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, he could not believe his eyes. Part of the US administration’s peace plan, say recent reports, would involve Washington recognising annexed Crimea as legitimate Russian territory, among other concessions to the Kremlin that Trump hopes might stop Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“The whole world knows what happened in Crimea … It would be such a damage to the reputation of the US that it will be hard for them to recover. It would be shameful,” said Dzhemilev, a Soviet-era dissident turned Crimean Tatar political leader, in an interview at his office in Kyiv.