U.N. Security Council to Meet Thursday on Crimea

The U.N. Security Council will hold a closed door meeting on Crimea Thursday, one year after Russia wrested the territory away from Ukraine, diplomats said.

Moscow, which claims it was forced to take over Crimea to protect ethnic Russians after the ouster of Ukraine's Kremlin-backed government, is refusing to attend the meeting, diplomats said on Wednesday.

"The Russians are boycotting on the grounds that Crimea is an integral part of Russia and is not a legitimate subject of discussion by the Security Council," a Western diplomat told reporters.

Russia believes that the meeting, which was requested by Lithuania, has a "biased political agenda," the diplomat said.

Moscow reportedly is also unhappy about the format for talks held as a so-called Arria-Formula meeting -- an informal, confidential gathering which allows a more free-wheeling exchange, and which permits of the 15-nation Security Council to invite outside experts and witnesses. 

Generally speaking, the goal of holding a meeting in this format is to encourage a "frank and private exchange of views," the United Nations has said.

Arria-Formula meetings do not appear on the official U.N. Security Council agenda and each member state can decide whether or not to take part.

Invited to take part in Thursday's meeting is Mustafa Dzhemilev, leader of Crimea's minority Tatar ethnic group, who had said they are constantly attacked and harassed now that the region is under Russian control.

A Muslim community that comprises about 13 percent of the province's population, the Crimean Tatars were opposed to Moscow's takeover from Ukraine.

Dzhemilev recently said there is a "total absence of democratic freedom" for Tatars in Crimea, which he said has led some 20,000 to flee the region.

The Security Council has held some 30 meetings on the conflict in Ukraine which have often given way to some sharp exchanges between Russia and the Western envoys.

The United States and its European partners accuse Russia of sending troops and military hardware to east Ukraine to prop up separatist fighters, a charge Moscow denies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty claiming the Black Sea region of Crimea as Russian territory with Crimean prime minister Sergei Aksyonov after more than 97 percent of Crimeans voted in favor of joining Russia in a disputed referendum on March 16, 2014.

The election, which has not been recognized by the international community, was held under the eyes of elite Russian troops who had swarmed key sites across Crimea two weeks earlier in unmarked uniforms.

After fresh hostilities flared in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed rebels and Ukrainian troops after the annexation, a February 15 ceasefire was reached to end the conflict -- Europe's worst since the war in the Balkans in the 1990s.

The United Nations last month said the death toll from the fighting in eastern Ukraine had reached over 6,000, and scores more reportedly have been killed since then, according to officials in Kiev.