Crimea cannot be returned to Ukraine, Czech President Milos Zeman said on Friday, answering readers’ questions in the Parlamentni Listy newspaper.

“An annexation means breaching international agreements, and it is doubtless that agreements guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity were breached,” Zeman said.

But, at the same time, the Czech President noted that an unforgivable stupidity was committed by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1954 made Crimea a part of Ukraine, which was then a part of the Soviet Union.

“The world’s politicians acknowledge today that Crimea cannot be given back to Ukraine,” Zeman stressed.

Milos Zeman (Photo: BGNES)

In 2014, immediately after the Crimean Republic’s accession into the Russian Federation, Zeman had urged the EU to accept this fact and said that the region’s return to Ukraine should not be expected in the foreseeable future.

On August 25, the Czech President said that the time to join the countries, advocating for lifting of the anti-Russian sanctions, has come for the Czech Republic, and stressed that the US embargo on Cuba had demonstrated that these kinds of measures were ineffective.

“I support improving relations with Russia due to economic and cultural reasons. Russia is a part of the European-American civilization, which is fighting against international Islamic terrorism,” Zeman concluded.