Ukraine's presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, has rebuffed comments by former US President Barack Obama on Russia's annexation of Crimea.
On Thursday, Obama said during an interview on CNN that there was no “armed invasion” of Crimea by Moscow.
"If @BarackObama publicly states that Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014... was 'legal and justified,' then we should not be surprised that today there is a full-scale Russian aggression in Europe and a large-scale war of aggression that is taking hundreds of thousands of lives," Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter.
Podolyak also argued it should come as no surprise that international law "practically does not exist" based on Obama's statements, further claiming that the current Russian government is "a blatant reflection of a specific pre-war 'Western policy'."
"Maybe it's time to start admitting critical mistakes instead of coming up with new excuses," Podolyak said.
In the CNN interview, Obama said Crimea already had a high number of Russian speakers by the time of the invasion. He further said the occupants of the peninsula had developed “some sympathy” towards Russia because they felt Moscow was "representing their interests."
Obama also argued that he and Germany's then-Chancellor Angela Merkel had to push other European countries to impose sanctions on Russia to prevent President Vladimir Putin from "continuing through the Donbas and through the rest of Ukraine."
In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, a move widely viewed as illegal by the international community, including Türkiye and the UN General Assembly.
