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Crimea and Sevastopol

Russian lawmaker: Ukraine’s food blockade of Crimea has no chances of achieving its aims

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko said the purpose of Crimea’s blockade is to achieve its return to Ukraine

Member of a Right Sector nationalist group trying to block a road heading towards Crimea AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

Member of a Right Sector nationalist group trying to block a road heading towards Crimea

© AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

MOSCOW, September 22. /TASS/. Crimea’s food blockade that Kiev authorities regard as a tool that might help them bring about the peninsula’s return to Ukraine, will have the reverse effect, the chairman of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, Alexey Pushkov, said on Tuesday.

"If Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko is to be believed, the purpose of Crimea’s blockade is to achieve its return to Ukraine. But the result is obvious - the blockade is doomed to have a backlash effect," Pushkov wrote on his page in Twitter.

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The first deputy head of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, Frants Klintsevich, believes that "one has to be utterly ignorant of the realities to claim in full seriousness the food blockade might help Ukraine regain control of Crimea."

"In reality the blockade is not even a mosquito bite but only quiet buzzing nobody cares to take note of," Klintsevich told the media.

In principle, he remarked, in politics it is possible to assume different disguises, but a funny disguise is the worst of all.

"President Poroshenko, who just recently published his expanded ‘black list’ of undesirable persons put himself in an awkward position. Now, several days later there has followed another blunder. Two in a row look like a diagnosis," Klintsevich said.

On Sunday, September 20, supporters of Crimea’s former deputy prime minister, Lenur Islyamov, and Crimean Tatar activists Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov launched what they called Crimea’s food blockade to upset the free passage of trucks carrying foods to the peninsula. The extremist group Right Sector, outlawed in Russia, has joined in.

Crimea’s leader Sergey Aksyonov has described Ukraine’s blockade of the peninsula as a cheap comedy. Ukrainian foods account for no more than five percent on the shelves in Crimea’s supermarkets.

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Crimea and Sevastopol

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