Rossiya Segodnya Chief Urges Council of Crimean Tatars to Register

The council of Crimean Tatars, the Mejlis, should register and declare its financial sources, Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency Director General Dmitry Kiselev said Friday.

SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik) — Earlier in March, the Crimean Supreme Court began to review an administrative application to recognize the Mejlis as an extremist organization and to ban it in Russia.

"As for the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, I don't mind it, but [it should] register, reveal its goals, honestly declare its purposes, sources of funding, and then let us work together. If you refuse to register, if you refuse to enter the legal field, if you refuse to declare own purposes, if you are conducting non-transparent activities with non-transparent financing, then you will be asked questions, and that is perfectly legitimate," Kiselev said during a videoconference devoted to the second anniversary of Crimea becoming a part of Russia.

During the conference, Crimean Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov stressed that the Mejlis, which he accuses of pursuing aggressive policies toward Crimean people, is being financed by the US State Department.

In March 2014, a referendum in Crimea on joining Russia was approved by 96 percent of voters following a declaration of independence from Ukraine.