KIEV, August 27. /TASS/. Ukraine has issued a note of protest in light of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Crimea and Sevastopol and sent it to the Russian foreign ministry, the Ukrainian diplomatic agency said Thursday.
"Ukraine has issued a resolute protest in light of Russian President Putin’s another visit to Crimea and the city of Sevastopol that began on August 2 and was not agreed with Ukraine," the ministry noted.
The agency views this visit similarly to all previous trips of Russian officials to Crimea and Sevastopol "as brazen violation of Ukraine’s state sovereignty and territorial integrity," the statement underlined.
Putin travelled to Crimea on August 27 to give permission to open vehicle traffic along the finished sections of the Tavrida Highway and drove on one of them.
After the coup d’etat in Ukraine in February 2014, Crimea and Sevastopol held a referendum, in which 96.7% of Crimeans and 95.6% of Sevastopol voters chose to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. Eighty percent of the voting population participated in the referendum. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the reunification deal on March 18, 2014, which the Federation Council (upper house of the Russian parliament) ratified on March 21, 2014. Despite the convincing results of the referendum, Kiev refused to recognize Crimea as a part of Russia.