Putin says Crimea 'returned home' after Russia's invasion, announces new rail route via Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the “return” of Crimea to the Russian territory at an event to commemorate 10 years of the country’s illegal annexation of the former Ukrainian territory.

Putin who was recently re-elected in a landslide victory called Crimea the “pride” of Russia, in a brief address at a concert held at Moscow’s Red Square on Monday.

Putin said Crimea had “returned to its home harbour” after Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory in 2014, which led to a tussle between the two countries. Eight years later, Russia announced a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, only this time to occupy more Ukrainian territories, which Putin now calls part of the “new Russia”.

The Russian leader hailed the seizure of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia and called their invasion “much more grave and tragic” than Crimea.

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“But in the end we did it. It is a big event in the history of our country,” Putin said

Putin had also justified his country’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula as a matter of great historical redemption. The Black Sea region, Putin insisted, was as dear to Russians “as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem” is to Jews and Muslims, Putin was quoted earlier as saying in The Washington Post report.

A new railway line to Crimea?

A bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland was opened in 2018 but closed twice due to attacks between the two warring sides. Putin announced a new railway route connecting Crimea’s Sevastopol and the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, in an an attempt to better connect the port city to the Russian mainland.

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The railway line would be as Putin says, “another, alternative road”, that would pass via the occupied Ukrainian territories of Donetsk, Mariupol, and Berdyansk.

“This is how together, hand in hand, we will move on. This is what - not in words, but in deeds - makes us really stronger,” Putin said while addressing thousands at the Red Square.

Notably, for the first time occupied Ukrainian regions of Donbass and Novorossia voted in Russian elections. The polling in these places began 10 days before the elections started in the rest of Russia, with social media flooded with advertisements urging people to cast votes.