MOSCOW, March 16 (UPI) -- Russia should drop a land dispute it is pursuing with Ukraine, a senior Duma member said Wednesday.
Alexander Lebedev, the co-chairman of the Russian-Ukrainian
inter-parliamentary commission and a member of the State Duma, the main chamber of the Russian parliament, told the Interfax news agency he believes Russia should drop its territorial claims on the neighboring former Soviet republic.
"Russia should get rid of the imperial complexes like making territorial claims on Ukraine," Lebedev told Interfax editors and reporters.
The best solution to the geo-strategic disagreements between Russia and Ukraine could result in very positive changes in the development of economic relations between the two most populous former Soviet republics, Lebedev said.
"We need to fill our economic integration with real content. This is one of the priorities now," he said.
Lebedev described as irrelevant statements by some Russian politicians concerning Russia's dispute with Ukraine over the eventual permanent status of the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea. "We need to abandon the
'to-whom-the-Crimea-belongs' sort of statements. Nobody in Europe cares about this issue," he said. Russia has an opportunity to become investor No. 1 in the Crimea."
