KIEV, Feb. 27 – Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said speculation over leasing Crimea to the Russian Federation is a deliberate surrender of the annexed peninsula to [Russian] occupiers.

"Speculation that Crimea will 'go the way of Alaska' is a deliberate attempt to surrender Crimea. No one in the U.S. seriously discusses these kinds of plans. If 'payments' are made, then it means someone has already divvied them up with someone else. We should not be silent about this," Klimkin said in an interview appearing in the Kiev-based weekly Dzerkalo Tyzhnia newspaper on February 25.