Crimean Federal District

BELGRADE - Crimea's incorporation into Russia was legitimate, leader of France's National Front, Marine Le Pen, has said.

"I do not think that (Crimea's) reunification (with Russia) was illegitimate," she told the BFM TV network on Tuesday. "A referendum was organized, and residents of Crimea voted to join Russia. I see no grounds whatsoever to question this referendum."

BELGRADE- Foreign diplomats in Belgrade should not be lecturing Serbia or interfering in its policy, Serbian FM Ivica Dacic said Tuesday.

PHOTO: TANJUG / MINISTARSTVO SPOLJNIH POSLOVA

BELGRADE- Foreign diplomats in Belgrade should not be lecturing Serbia or interfering in its policy, Serbian FM Ivica Dacic said Tuesday.

First Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic says Serbia found a recent UNGA resolution on Crimea unacceptable because of the way it qualified Russia.

As Dacic told reporters in Belgrade on Thursday, the Kiev-proposed resolution on "violations of human rights in Crimea" speaks about Russia "in the worst possible way."

The UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution calling for international monitoring of the situation regarding human rights in Crimea, Sputnik has reported.

The draft resolution was submitted by Ukraine, and was supported by 70 countries. 26 were against, while 77 abstained.

Since Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the military operations in eastern Ukraine, the concept of a "Cold War" has become part of our daily lexicon again. While the U.S.-led Western alliance hasn't fully digested the annexation of Crimea and has been busy developing strategies on how to best confront Russian expansionism in Eastern Europe, the Kremlin decided to get directly involved in

The United States is co-hosting drills in the Black Sea with what is left of Ukraine's devastated navy, which lost about two thirds of its sailors and ships after Russia seized Crimea last year.
 

After catching a 21-kilo fish, piloting a F1 race car and flying in a supersonic warplane, among many other PR stunts, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday was shown plunging into the Black Sea waters in a mini-submarine to explore a shipwreck off Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed after seizing it from war-torn Ukraine.

Russian military aircraft were scrambled to head off a US warship that was acting "aggressively" in the Black Sea, state news agency RIA reported on May 30, but the Pentagon denied any unusual behavior. 

A group of Russian divers said May 27 they had found Byzantine-era ship wreckage in the Black Sea off Crimea that included a trove of 10th century pottery.