KIEV, August 23. /TASS/. Police of the Kiev region on Wednesday opened a criminal case over the incident where a map of Ukraine without Crimea and Donbass appeared on public display in the town of Brovary, a suburb of Kiev, Nikolai Zhukovich, the spokesman for the regional police said.
"We put the banner down and it will be used further as material evidence in the criminal case we have already opened," UNN news agency quoted him. "This is Article 110 of the Criminal Code (Encroachments on the Territorial Integrity and Inviolability of Ukraine)."
Zhukovich said the police were interrogating everyone who they believed might have been involved in the incident.
On Wednesday, a stage was put up in front of the Brovary town hall for the festivities on occasion of Independence Day. It was decorated with a map of Ukraine that did not show Crimea, which is a region of Russia as of 2014 but which Kiev continues making claims to, and the areas of eastern Ukraine uncontrolled by the Kiev government as parts of Ukraine.
In connection with the incident, the local authorities fired the director of culture department, Inna Savchenko.
On March 16, 2014, in the wake of the state coup in Kiev the authorities of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol held a referendum on the issue of reunification with Russia after a 60-year-long period of forced separation. More than 80% of registered voters came to the polls and of that number, 96.7% in Crimea and 95.6% in Sevastopol voted in favor of reunification.
On March 18, 2014, President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty on accession of the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol to the Russian Federation, and both houses of Russian parliament ratified it on March 21.
In spite of more than convincing results of the referendum, Kiev and its outside supporters, primarily the U.S. and the EU, refuse to recognize the results of voting.