The Austrian Party of Freedom Candidate for the country’s President Norbert Hofer said in an interview with Die Presse that Crimea should never have been handed over to Ukraine and that it’s now high time for the West to begin lifting sanctions on Russia, reports Sputnik.
The major mistake was done very long time ago, when announcement that Crimea was no longer Russian made, Hofer said, referring to 1954 cession of the peninsula from then-Soviet Russia to the Ukraine Soviet Republic.
According to Hofer, an internationally controlled referendum on Crimea’s national self-determination should have been carried out shortly after the USSR dissolution in 1991.