Today President of Latvia Egils Levits called for the creation of an effective international solidarity initiative – the Ukraine Platform with the aim to maintain the issues of the occupation and annexation of Ukrainian territory on the international agenda.
As the aggression against Ukraine by Putin’s regime continues, support of the international community is more important now than ever before, therefore the President of Latvia proposes to create the Ukraine Platform to combine state and civil initiative efforts to maintain the issues of the occupation and annexation of Ukrainian territory on the international agenda. “I believe that in future the Crimea Platform needs to become the core for a broader Ukraine Platform. Bringing together states, civil society and especially Ukrainian diaspora organisations, the Ukraine Platform could become an effective international solidarity initiative helping restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine and providing necessary support after the end of the war to remedy the damage caused by the aggression of Putin’s regime,” President of Latvia Egils Levits said in his address at the international conference dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of the National Resistance Movement “Protecting the State. Then and Now: National Resistance Experience in the Baltic States and Ukraine”.
The President of Latvia highlighted that just like other member states of the European Union, Latvia has not and never will recognise the violation of the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine forcefully perpetrated by Putin’s regime in breach of international law.
As President Levits noted in his address, when speaking with President Zelensky the President of Latvia had proposed to him that an international platform ought to be created, where member states would commit to constantly maintain on the international agenda the issue of the occupation and annexation of Crimea. In August 2021 this idea came to fruition with the establishment of the Crimea Platform, which is an institutional framework to constantly keep the issue of the need to deoccupy Crimea on the international agenda. The Crimea Platform is based on Latvia’s experience as to the importance of international law and using it to restore national independence, which can now be employed by Ukraine. More than 40 states have already joined the platform.