The newly appointed head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium, former journalist and presenter Hadja Lahbib, visited the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in July 2021. She didnʼt tell how exactly she got there, and did not call it the territory of Ukraine.
This is evidenced by her publications on social networks and appearances on television, writes Evropeyska Pravda.
In particular, in July 2021, Lahbib published photos from Sevastopol on her Instagram.
She also attended the Global Values festival organized by the Sevastopol Academic Russian Drama Theater named after Lunacharsky. In 2021, it was held on July 23-25. Lahbib was noted in one of the posts about the festival on Facebook. She herself shared this post on her own page with the comment: "Intensive moments of creation."
Lahbib also published fragments of a choreographic performance from this festival on her Instagram. According to her, the visit to this festival was the main purpose of the trip to Crimea.
In addition, Lahbib posted on her Facebook photos from the exhibition in the Livadia Palace with an exposition about the Yalta Conference and from Chekhovʼs dacha in Yalta.
After the trip, she was asked on television about this visit and about the status of the peninsula, in particular, about whether she returned "from Ukraine or from Russia". Lahbib did not answer clearly, but noted that "to land at the Simferopol airport, a Russian visa is required". After that, she showed the comment of a local resident from the Sevastopol bay, who says that "Crimea has always had Russian culture and no connection with Ukrainian culture".
"Of course, the answer would be different if I handed the microphone to a Crimean Tatar or a Ukrainian," Lahbib notes.
Deputies of the Belgian parliament drew attention to the fact that before the appointment Lahbibʼs Wikipedia page was quickly cleaned up, changing the description of the trip to Crimea.