For peace to be durable, the new territorial realities that emerged after the accession of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Lugansk, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions to the Russian Federation following the referenda must be recognized and formalized in an international legal manner, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, informs the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

“Finally, Ukraine’s neutral, non-aligned, and nuclear-free status must be ensured. These conditions were spelled out in Ukraine’s 1990 Declaration of Independence, and Russia and the international community used them to recognize the Ukrainian statehood,” the Russian FM added in an interview with Indonesian newspaper Kompas.