40 countries confirm participation in Crimea Platform summit

KIEV, Ukraine

A total of 40 countries have confirmed they will attend the Crimea Platform summit in Kyiv on Aug. 23, Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Friday.

There was no solution mechanism for Crimea's annexation during the past seven years, but "this mistake will be fixed with the platform," Dmytro Kuleba told an online briefing.

He stressed that the international support of the platform gains momentum.

Recalling the remarks of Indian freedom icon Mahatma Gandhi -- "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" -- Kuleba said they are currently in the third stage, and that the fourth stage will come soon and Crimea will be liberated.

The Crimea Platform is a diplomatic initiative of Ukraine that is intended to be an international coordination mechanism to draw more global attention to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Protection of local Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars and their religious heritage, prevention of further human rights violations, freedom of international navigation in the Black Sea and Azov Sea, and Russia's militarization of the peninsula are among the topics on the summit agenda.

*Writing by Jeyhun Aliyev in Ankara