MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Kiev understands the impossibility of regaining Crimea, Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, said Tuesday.
"I believe that Ukraine understands that the Crimean peninsula will not return to it. It will have to come to terms with this situation, as it is the will of the people of Crimea and Sevastopol," Matvienko told the Izvestiya newspaper.
According to Matvienko, Crimea has fully adapted to being a part of Russia.
Following a 96-percent vote in March 2014, Crimea reunified with Russia after over 60 years of Ukrainian rule.
The republic’s secession – declared illegitimate by the West and Kiev – and the subsequent conflict in southeast Ukraine has drawn several rounds of anti-Russia sanctions from the United States, the European Union and other allied nations.
