MOSCOW, June 23. /TASS/. Former US President Barack Obama's remarks on Crimea contain a hint of wisdom, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
"Indeed, it is not up to us to comment on these statements. Certainly, they do have a hint of wisdom to them," the spokesman said when asked by journalists to comment on the former US leader's remarks on Crimea.
"There was quite a large political faction there (in Ukraine - TASS) that really supported the idea of developing good relations with Russia and was against the spread of Russophobia," Peskov said. "Not just a certain part of Crimea's population, but practically the entire population of Crimea wanted to become part of the Russian Federation, this is also a known fact. So we see that from time to time some rational opinions do come up," Peskov added.
Earlier, Barack Obama said in an interview with CNN that many Russian-speaking residents of Crimea supported the idea of the peninsula joining Russia in 2014, and some European countries were aware of that. He also noted that even certain Ukrainian parliamentarians supported Russia.
"Ukraine of that time was not the Ukraine that we’re talking about today, <...> Crimea was full of a lot of Russian speakers and there was some sympathy to the views that Russia was representing." <...> Part of what happened was, both myself and also [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, who I give enormous credit for, had to pull in a lot of other Europeans kicking and screaming to impose the sanctions [on Moscow]" the former White House host said.
In March 2014, Crimea and Sevastopol held a referendum on reunification with Russia. Almost 97% of voters supported the regions' accession to the Russian Federation.