German Bundestag delegation to visit Crimea in 2019

The delegation of the German parliament will visit Crimea next year, the head of Die Linke party group of the Quakenbruck parliament, Andreas Maurer, said at the meeting with Russian upper house member Olga Tomofeyeva.

"Andreas Maurer told that the Bundestag's delegation plans to visit Crimea next year," the Russian upper house's press service said.

According to him, "representatives of the Bundestag will have the opportunity to witness the changes taking place on the peninsula and form an objective picture" of the situation.

Maurer said that many German politicians condemn Russia's position, but often do not even know the content of the Minsk agreements.

The senior research fellow at the European Research Centre of the International Relations Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Olenchenko, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that such visits directly benefit the Russian-German relations. "In order to form an opinion, you need to familiarize yourself with the situation, talk to people, see what is happening there with your own eyes. This is a normal international practice, when a delegation from one country comes to another and sees on the spot the things which may be in the focus of media attention or the subject of political issues. We know that negative assessments of Crimea prevail in the Western media. Such visits will benefit us, since there will be more German politicians with their own representation of Crimea," he explained.

The deputy head of the Council of the Russian Diplomats Association, Andrey Baklanov, assessed the value of the upcoming visit even more highly. "The visit of Crimea by German MPs is especially important, since Berlin traditionally takes a very clear position on the complex legal issue of the relationship between sovereignty and the will of the people, including in territorial terms," he recalled.

"In the German tradition, both legal and political, there is recognition of the priority of the people's will, and this is exactly what happened in Crimea. Therefore, based on its own case law, Berlin should respect the will of Crimea and perhaps be the first among Europeans to recognize the peninsula as part of Russia. Gradually, Europe will realize the fact that the annexation of the Crimea is a solved issue. One can accept it or not, but it will change nothing," Andrey Baklanov concluded.