Russia's Annexation of Crimea, 5th Anniversary - Press Conference (18 March 2019)

Press Conference: Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations
On the fifth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Russian Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy today (18 Mar) said his government has “nothing to be ashamed of,” and noted that for the past three days there have been “festivities in Crimea and the rest of Russia.”
Polyanskiy said that “since the end of 2014 Ukraine limits very much the crossing of de facto border with Russian Federation in Crimea, in the northern part of Crimea” while “there are no limitations” for Ukrainians entering the peninsula. He said, “last year there was a record flow of Ukrainians according to our statistics about one million people came to Crimea.”
The Russian diplomat said, “close of 90 percent the people of Crimea” support the annexation, “even now after the region became part of Russian Federation and had to endure a lot of painful but necessary economic reforms.”
Polyanskiy said that before annexation “there were direct threats. There were a lot of nationalists who were trying to penetrate the borders of the peninsula, and it was absolutely clear that the authorities, the junta that arrived to power came to power in Kiev, were aiming at kind of cleansing this Russian element from Crimea.”
Responding to a question regarding the 2016 elections in the United States, the Ambassador said it was “very trendy now to really blame everything on Russia. Russia is such a nice scapegoat in Western societies. If nothing comes out of what you are doing, just blame it on Russia and everybody will say, yes, of course, those bad Russians, they are behind this.”