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MAP
Map taken from the Economist website at
https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/06/08/crimea-is-still-in-
limbo-five-years-after-russia-seized-it
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INTRODUCTIONUkraine’s most prolonged and deadly crisis
since its post-Soviet independence began as a
protest against the government dropping plans
to forge closer trade ties with the European
Union, and has since spurred escalating
tensions between Russia and Western powers.
The crisis stems from more than twenty years of
weak governance, a lopsided economy
dominated by oligarchs, heavy reliance on
Russia, and sharp differences between
Ukraine’s linguistically, religiously, and
ethnically distinct eastern and western regions.
After the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovich
in February 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean
peninsula and the port city of Sevastopol, and
deployed tens of thousands of forces near the
border of eastern Ukraine, where conflict
erupted between pro-Russian separatists and
the new government in Kiev. Russia’s moves,
including reported military support for
separatist forces, mark a serious challenge to
established principles of world order such as
sovereignty and nonintervention.
Why is Ukraine in Crisis?
The country of forty-five million people has
struggled with its identity since the dissolution
of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukraine has failed
to resolve its internal divisions and build strong
political institutions, hampering its ability to
implement economic reforms. In the decade
following independence, successive presidents
allowed oligarchs to gain increasing control
over the economy while repression against
political opponents intensified.
By 2010, Ukraine’s fifty richest people
controlled nearly half of the country’s gross
domestic product, writes Andrew Wilson in the
CFR book Pathways to Freedom.
A reformist tide briefly crested in 2004 when
the Orange Revolution, set off by a rigged
presidential election won by Yanukovich,
brought Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency.
Yet infighting among elites hampered reforms,
and severe economic troubles resurged with
the global economic crisis of 2008. The
revolution also masked the divide between
European-oriented western and central
Ukraine and Russian-oriented southern and
eastern Ukraine.
Campaigning on a platform of closer ties with
Russia, Yanukovich won the 2010 presidential
election. By many accounts, he then reverted
to the pattern of corruption and cronyism. His
family may have embezzled as much as $8
billion to $10 billion a year over three years,
according to Anders Aslund of the Peterson
Institute for International Economics. He also
imprisoned his reformist opponent in the 2010
presidential race, Yulia Tymoshenko, on
charges of abuse of power.
Yanukovich continued talks with the EU on a
trade association agreement, which he
signaled he would sign in late2013.
(Tymoshenko’s release was one of the
conditions set by the EU for the trade
association agreement.) But under pressure
from Russia, he dropped those plans in
November, citing concerns about European
competition.
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The decision provoked demonstrations in Kiev
on what became known as the Euromaidan by
protesters seeking to align their future with
Europe’s and speaking out against corruption.
The Yanukovich government’s crackdown after
three months of protests, in some cases
spurring reprisals by radicalized demonstrators,
caused the bloodiest conflict in the country’s
post-Soviet period, with scores killed.
Yanukovich’s subsequent ouster sowed new
divisions between the eastern and western
halves of the country, and fighting between
pro-Russian separatists and government forces
broke out in April 2014. Separatists in the
regions of Luhansk and Donetsk established
self-declared “people’s republics.”
Elections on May 25 brought pro-Western
businessman Petro Poroshenko into power, and
he moved to try to reassert central government
control over restive eastern cities. By August,
the fighting had killed more than 2,000 people
and caused hundreds of thousands to flee their
homes, according to UN officials. Officials in
Kiev and NATO states accused Russia of
arming the separatists and said rebels in
eastern Ukraine using Russia-supplied ground-
to-air missiles were responsible for the
downing of a civilian airliner in July 2014, in
which 298 people were killed. Russia denied
the charges but has continuously deployed
thousands of troops near the Ukrainian border
What are Russia's concerns?
Russia has strong fraternal ties with Ukraine
dating back to the ninth century and the
founding of Kievan Rus, the first eastern Slavic
state, whose capital was Kiev. Ukraine was
part of Russia for centuries, and the two
continued to be closely aligned through the
Soviet period, when Ukraine and Russia were
separate republics. “The West must understand
that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just
aforeign country,” wrote former U.S. secretary
of state Henry Kissinger in a Washington Post
op-ed
Ukraine is also a major economic partner that
Russia would like to incorporate into its
proposed Eurasian Union, a customs bloc due
to be formed in January 2015 whose likely
members include Kazakhstan, Belarus, and
Armenia.
Ukraine plays an important role in Russia’s
energy trade; its pipelines provide transit to 80
percent of the natural gas Russia sends to
European markets, and Ukraine itself is a major
market for Russian gas. Militarily, Ukraine is
also important to Russia as a buffer state, and
was home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, based in
the Crimean port city of Sevastopol under a
bilateral agreement between the two states.
Russia considers EU efforts to expand
eastward to Ukraine, even through a relatively
limited association agreement, as an alarming
step that opens the door to others Western
institutions. The EU’s Eastern Partnership
Program is aimed at forging tighter bonds with
six former Eastern bloc countries, but Russia
sees it as a stepping stone to organizations
such as NATO, whose eastward expansion is
regarded by Russia’s security establishment as
a threat. Ukraine belongs to NATO’s
Partnership for Peace program, but is seen as
having little prospect of joining the alliance in
the foreseeable future.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has portrayed
his country’s role in Ukraine as safeguarding
ethnic Russians worried by lawlessness
spreading east from the capital, charges that
leaders in Kiev dismiss as provocations. In the
case of Crimea, Putin has stressed Moscow is
not imposing its will, but rather, supporting the
free choice of the local population, drawing
parallels with the support Western states gave
to Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence
from Serbia. Shortly before moving to annex
Crimea on March 18, Putin told the Russian
parliament that Russia would protect the rights
of Russians abroad.
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What is the role of the European Union?
The EU’s Eastern Partnership Program was
established in 2009 to expand political and
economic ties between the EU and Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and
Ukraine, while stopping short of offering
membership to partner countries. The ill-fated
association agreement negotiated by EU
officials and the Yanukovich government
involved a comprehensive free-trade deal. A
number of analysts fault EU officials for
neglecting the broader geopolitical
implications of the deal for Russia, and
declining to map out strategic aims for Europe.
After Poroshenko’s election, he pressed
forward plans to sign the association
agreement and Ukraine did so along with
Moldova and Georgia on June 27, 2014.
Poroshenko said after signing the agreement:
“Ukraine is underlining its sovereign choice in
favor of membership of the EU.”
What is the status of Crimea?
Prior to the crisis, Crimea was an autonomous
republic of Ukraine of two million people with
its own parliament and laws that permitted the
use of the Russian language in everyday life.
After the ouster of Yanukovich in February
2014, Crimea’s parliament called for a
referendum, in which the peninsula’s 1.5 million
voters opted overwhelmingly for union with
Russia. Following that vote, Russian legislators
passed a resolution nullifying Ukrainian laws in
Crimea and putting in force Russian legislation.
Parliament set a deadline of January 1, 2015 for
the integration of Crimea’s economic,
financial, credit, and legal systems into the
Russian Federation, reported Itar-Tass. It said
matters related to military service in Crimea
and Sevastopol will be settled by then as well.
he peninsula only became part of Ukraine in
1954, when Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev
transferred it from the Russian Soviet Socialist
Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist
Republic in what was seen as a largely
symbolic administrative move. The majority-
Russian residents of Crimea continued to have
strong ties with Russia. Following the
dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the two
new countries reached an agreement to permit
the Russian Black Sea fleet to remain based at
the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
Overall, Russians make up an estimated 59
percent of the population of Crimea,
Ukrainians make up about 23 percent, and
Muslim Tatars about 12 percent.
Do Russian moves in Ukraine violate
international law?
U.S. officials say Russia’s actions in Crimea and
eastern Ukraine are in breach of international
law, including the nonintervention provisions in
the UN Charter; the 1997 Treaty on Friendship
and Cooperation between Russia and Ukraine,
which requires Russia to respect Ukraine’s
territorial integrity; and the 1994 Budapest
Memorandum on Security Assurances. Signed
by the United States, UK, and Russia, that
document provided security guarantees to
Ukraine in exchange for relinquishing its
nuclear arsenal.
For its part, Russia has rejected charges that it
is violating international law.
What are U.S. and European policy options
in Ukraine?
In response to the developments in Crimea and
eastern Ukraine, EU and U.S. policymakers
have taken a series of steps that include:
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Economic aid: The IMF in the spring approved
a loan package for Ukraine for $17 billion over
two years. The EU has delivered hundreds of
millions of dollars of an announced $15 billion
support package for Ukraine, with payments
conditioned on Ukraine enacting tough reforms
like ending gas subsidies. Washington has
promised more than $1 billion in U.S. loan
guarantees and technical assistance. In late
August 2014, German chancellor Angela
Merkel pledged nearly $700 million in aid to
help Ukraine rebuild war-damaged areas in the
east and aid refugees.
Sanctions: The United States, the EU, Japan,
and Canada have imposed sanctions on scores
of Russian and Ukrainian officials and
businesses said to be linked to the seizure of
Crimea and the escalation in tensions. The
measures include travel bans and the freezing
of assets. The United States and European
Union announced more severe measures in late
July that blocked some Russian banks from U.S.
and European capital markets, and generally
target Russian finance, energy, and defense
industries. Russia was hit by a slowdown in
growth and investment in the first quarter of
2014, and the scope of the new sanctions
suggest a substantial, longer-term cost to the
Russian economy,says CFR’s Robert Kahn.
Russia retaliated by banning imports of food
stuffs from the United States and many
European states in July 2014.
Energy aid: Some experts and U.S. lawmakers
have called for accelerating the approval of
U.S. natural gas proposals, which would take
advantage of booming U.S. production to help
lessen the reliance of European partners and
Ukraine on Russian natural gas. U.S. law
currently excludes the sale of natural gas to
countries that are not free-trade partners, but
the Energy Department can approve sales that
are deemed in the public interest. But some
analysts caution that even with the lifting of
export restrictions, it could take years and cost
billions of dollars to set up the necessary
infrastructure.
Military aid: The United States has bolstered
NATO’s air presence over the Baltic states and
deployed about six hundred soldiers in Latvia,
Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as Poland to
train with local forces as part of Operation
Atlantic Resolve. NATO secretary-general
Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the crisis the
greatest threat to European security since the
end of the Cold War, and reasserted alliance
ties with Ukraine through the Partnership For
Peace Program. The 2014 NATO summit in
Wales is expected to be dominated by
the alliance’s response to the crisis in Ukraine.
This content is taken directly from the Council
on Foreign Relations website and is available
at
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/ukraine-
crisis
'DEAR TO OUR HEARTS'
THE CRIMEAN CRISIS FROM THE KREMLIN'SPERSPECTIVE
The EU and US have come down hard on
Russia for its annexation of the Crimean
Peninsula. But from the perspective of the
Kremlin, it is the West that has painted
Putin into a corner. And the Russian
president will do what it takes to free
himself.
Last September, Vladimir Putin invited Russia
experts from around the world to a
conference, held halfway between Moscow
and St. Petersburg. At the gathering, the
Russian president delivered a passionate
address.
"We will never forget that Russia's present-day
statehood has its roots in Kiev. It was the
cradle of the future, greater Russian nation,"
Putin said. He added that Russians and
Ukrainians have a "shared mentality,
shared history and a shared culture. In this
sense we are one people."
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At the time, German and European leaders still
believed that it would be possible to bind
Ukraine to the European Union by way of an
Association Agreement and to free the country
from Moscow's clutches. But Putin had
long before made the decision to prevent such
an eventuality.
Indeed, he had already used the Crimean
Peninsula as his stage for a symbolic and
vaguely menacing appearance in the summer
of 2012. Astride a three-wheel motorcycle, a
black-clad Putin was photographed at the
head of a group of staunch nationalist bikers.
Like a group of modern-day knights, they tore
across Ukrainian territory. Even then it was
clear who Putin thought was the true leader of
Ukraine: himself.
Putin knows that the vast majority of Russians
are on his side when it comes to his Crimean
policy. His cool and calculated -- and thus far
remarkably peaceful -- annexation of the
peninsula led to celebrations across Russia.
After all, the conviction that Crimea -- with its
"Hero Cities" of Sevastopol and Kerch in
addition to Russia's Black Sea fleet -- is
Russian soil is widespread and shared even by
many in the opposition camp. These are
places, Putin said in his address last week, that
are "dear to our hearts" and for which Russian
soldiers fought and died. Even Nobel Peace
Prize laureate Mikhail Gorbachev said last
week that the West should accept the results
of the Crimea referendum. "This should be
welcomed instead of declaring sanctions," he
said.
Putin's popularity rating had already begun
climbing as a result of the Winter Olympics in
Sochi, with even Kremlin-critical pollsters
reporting 67 percent approval. Now, that
number is approaching an astonishing 80
percent. But what does it mean? Is the
"reunification" with Crimea merely the last
twitch of a former Soviet superpower as its
successor state Russia rebels against a future
as a less meaningful regional power?
Or is it the beginning of a wave of re-
conquests from a country that has seen itself
for centuries as a hegemonic power in Eastern
Europe? Is Putin a neo-imperialist or is he just a
national leader with his back to the wall, one
who is merely interested in protecting his
country's security interests?
Specter of War
The world has changed since last week. The
Ukraine crisis represents the most recent
culmination of an extended process of
estrangement between Russia and the West.
The biggest country in the world will now likely
turn its attentions more to China and India.
In Europe, meanwhile, the specter of war has
returned, according to European Parliament
President Martin Schulz.
"Ever since Putin's speech at the Munich
Security Conference in 2007, everyone should
have known that Russia would no longer
accept Western games within its sphere of
influence," says Fyodor Lukyanov, Chairman of
the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and
Defense Policy in Moscow. "But the West never
took Putin seriously and never developed a
strategy to deal with Russia's legitimate
interests."
The West, says Lukyanov, disregarded every
initiative from Moscow to discuss a new
security regime for Europe, constantly
suspecting that Russia was seeking to drive a
wedge between Europe and the United States.
Putin's proxy, former President Dmitry
Medvedev, even presented a draft for a
European security treaty in 2009, one which
addressed territorial disputes and renounced
the use of violence. "We are now paying the
price for not having sat down at the table
then," Lukyanov says.
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Now, when the US and EU threaten to turn
away from Russia, few in Moscow are
particularly impressed. Aside from a couple of
billion-dollar deals that benefited both sides,
people close to Putin say, the only approach
from the West consisted in NATO's steady
eastward advance. Instead of appreciation for
Gorbachev's having ushered in a peaceful end
to the Cold War, the Russian view holds, the
West has sought to waltz all the way into Red
Square.
The view from the windows of the Kremlin is
first and foremost a geo-political one. During
Soviet times, the distance between the Russian
capital and the Western military alliance was
1,800 kilometers (1,120 miles). Were Ukraine to
become a member of NATO, as the US has
long desired, this distance would be reduced
to less than 500 kilometers. The Russian military
is afraid that they would lose once and for all
the strategic distance that allowed the country
to survive the invasions of both Napoleon and
Hitler.
This fear is partially the result of the traumatic,
post-Cold War reordering of Eastern Europe.
Eight years after the Soviet Union's collapse,
Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary
joined NATO. In 2004, they were followed by
Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the
three Baltic states; in 2009, Albania and
Croatia followed suit. When NATO intervened
in the Kosovo War by bombing Belgrade in 1999,
Russia was furious; Serbia had been a close
ally of Moscow's for centuries. In 2008, US
President George W. Bush's proposal to extend
NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine was
seen by Russia as a humiliation.
Plenty of Options
Now, Putin is releasing his people from their
collective feeling of shame. "If you compress a
spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back
hard," the Russian president said during his
address in the Kremlin last Tuesday.
Putin has a decisive advantage in the struggle
for Ukraine: He has the initiative. He acts and
the West reacts. And Moscow has plenty of
options.
The first option involves Putin making no further
advances, an eventuality that many in the West
quietly see as the best way to end the crisis. In
exchange for Western toleration of Russia's
Crimean land grab, Putin would refrain from
meddling in eastern Ukraine and would still be
able to bask in the admiration of the Russian
people.
But there are other options available. Putin
could use pro-Russian groups, economic
pressure and his own secret service to
destabilize Ukraine to such a degree that it
plunges into civil war. For such a scenario, the
weak and chaotic government and parliament
in Kiev are ideal partners, not to mention the
radical nationalists who rose to prominence
during the Maidan demonstrations. Indeed, the
divisions within Ukraine are already prominent.
It was only due to intense pressure exerted by
Berlin and Brussels that the acting government
in Kiev abstained from signing a law that would
have prohibited Ukrainian regions from making
Russian a second official language. The
planned measure had triggered outrage in
eastern Ukraine.
One-quarter of all Ukrainian exports go to
Russian, with 2.9 million Ukrainian workers in
Russia having sent $3 billion (€2.17 billion) to
relatives back home last year, an amount
equivalent to roughly 10 percent of the
country's budget. A Russian boycott would
likely mean a rapid end to the current Ukrainian
government, unless the US and Europe were to
jump in with a hefty aid package.
As such, Putin could simply play for time in the
hopes that sooner or later Ukraine will simply
fall into his lap like a ripe fruit -- perhaps even
a Ukraine bloated by Western aid. Under no
circumstances, however, will Putin simply leave
Ukraine to the West.
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Some close to Putin even believe that the
Russian president would be willing to go to war
to prevent that from happening.
Other Regions?
Hardliners in the Kremlin are urging Putin not to
stop at Crimea, arguing that areas that belong
to Russia anyway should be reunited with the
motherland. Never before, they say, has the
opportunity been quite as auspicious. Putin's
reputation among the Western elite is already
at a low point and NATO would certainly not
risk a nuclear war on Ukraine's account. Kremlin
leaders are fully aware that Germany's
willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of, for
example, the Russian-speaking industrial city of
Donetsk is rather limited.
"Russia should support the pro-Russian areas in
southern and eastern Ukraine and establish a
line of security from Kharkiv to Odessa, without
absorbing these areas into the Russian
Federation," advises political scientist
Alexander Nagorny. A referendum could then
transform Ukraine into a kind of federal state.
Moscow would have influence in Kiev, a NATO
membership for Ukraine would be prevented
and a bloody war avoided.
The West is now attempting to force Putin to
back down by way of sanctions. It is a strategy
that is much more comfortable for the US than
it is for Europe, with just 1 percent of American
trade being conducted with Russia and a lack
of reliance on Russia oil and natural gas.
Germany's trade with Russia, by contrast,
represents 3 percent of Berlin's imports and
exports, with a value of €76.5 billion. One-third
of Germany's oil and natural gas imports come
from Russia. It has always sounded good when
EU politicians insisted that Russia cannot be
allowed to have a say in Ukraine's future. But it
was never particularly realistic.
When it comes to Ukraine, Putin feels deceived
by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose
power instincts he admires, as well as by the
US. "The West's true aim is that of toppling the
bothersome Putin," says the Moscow-based
political scientist Sergei Markov, one of Putin's
most loyal acolytes. That is why initial sanctions
targeted the president's billionaire friends. The
West, he says, is trying to turn Russia's financial
elite against Putin.
'Can't Treat Us Like That'
But on the short- and mid-term, at least,
sanctions are likely to strengthen Putin. His
propaganda machine will present any
economic difficulties as being the fault of the
West, which will likely draw together the
country's anti-Western, conservative majority.
Even in Moscow, where never-published
surveys from a year ago showed that Putin had
lost his majority, sanctions will be seen as yet
another indignity visited on Russia by the West.
"First the German and Polish foreign ministers
make appearances on the Maidan, and now
they want to punish us for no longer being
willing to simply accept everything," says one
senior bank manager who has never voted for
Putin in her life. She wants Putin "to deliver a
strong response so that the West understands
that you can't treat us like that."
Russia, as one proverb would have it, has great
patience, but its response will be all the more
severe. Russian confronts pressure with
pressure and external critique has traditionally
been met with defiance. In 1830, France angrily
protested against czarist Russia's violent
crushing of an uprising in areas including
present-day western Ukraine and the Baltic
states. Paris even threatened military action.
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Renowned Russian poet Alexander Pushkin
penned a response in a poem entitled "To the
Slanderers of Russia." "What are you sounding
off about, you orators of nations? Why do you
threaten Russia with anathema? Leave off: It is
a battle of Slavs amongst themselves, a
domestic, ancient quarrel, already weighed by
fate. A question you will not decide."
Russia's recent reaction to European and US
sanctions was not dissimilar. Putin announced
that he intended to open an account with
Rossiya Bank, which had been targeted by
Washington, and Kremlin advisors expressed
pride at having been included on the list. Fully
353 of the 450 parliamentarians in the Duma
published a request that they too be added.
Not much would seem to have changed in
Russia since the times of Pushkin.
This article was published on Spiegel Online and can
be accessed at
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-look-
at-the-crimea-crisis-from-the-perspective-of-the-
kremlin-a-960446.html
What role does nationalism play in the
Russian view of Crimea?
How can theories of international relations
such as structural realism help us to make
sense of Putin's decision making in regard to
the annexation of Crimea?
Questions to consider:
VIDEO: INSIDE STORY
WHAT HAS RUSSIA GAINED FROM ANNEXINGCRIMEA?
How has Russia gained from its annexation
of Crimea? What were the costs? Overall,
was it worth it?
What has been the role of sanctions
throughout this period and what can we say
about the effectiveness of these sanctions?
To what extent does Russia have legitimacy
in Crimea?
This Al-Jazeera English report, presented by
Hazem Sika on the fifth anniversary of Russia's
annexation of Crimea, explores what Russia
has gained from this and discusses the issue
with Ilya Ponomarev - exiled Russian politican;
Mark Sleboda - international relations and
security analyst Oleksiy Haran - professor at
the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy.
Click the image on the left to watch the video
Questions to consider:
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THE LEGITIMACY OF RUSSIA'SACTIONS IN UKRAINE
IN THIS POST FOR LSE INTERNATIONAL HISTORY, BJÖRN ALEXANDER DÜBEN ANALYSES THE RECENT OUTBREAKOFCONFLICT IN UKRAINE. IN THE ARTICLE, DR DÜBEN EXAMINES RUSSIA’S MILITARY CAMPAIGN IN UKRAINE ANDITSANNEXATION OF UKRAINIAN TERRITORY. DR DÜBEN ARGUES THAT RUSSIA’S CLAIMS TO PARTS OF UKRAINEAND ITSANNEXATION OF TERRITORY IN THE COUNTRY HAS LITTLE BASIS IN HISTORY AND THE PARAMETERS OF
INTERNATIONALLAW.
When Russia’s President Vladimir Putin signed
the treaty on the ‘Restitution of Crimea and
Sevastopol inside the Russian Federation’ on
18 March 2014, Russia became the first state in
continental Europe to have annexed part of
another state’s territory since the 1940s. The
outbreak, shortly thereafter, of separatist
violence in eastern Ukraine made it evident
that Moscow’s territorial pretensions did not
exhaust themselves in the annexation of
Crimea. The Russian government has
consistently defended its startling moves in
Ukraine, denying all accusations that its
encroachments on the country’s sovereignty
have been illegitimate. Does it have any valid
grounds for doing so?
From a legal perspective, the answer is clear:
Having forcibly occupied parts of a sovereign
country’s territory, having formally annexed the
occupied territory, and having flooded another
part of the country with heavy weaponry and
irregular combatants (‘volunteers’ who were
permitted to cross the border in large numbers,
as well as regular soldiers), Moscow has acted
in violation of some of the most basic
principles of international law.
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The clarity of this legal breach was
underscored in dozens of UN Security Council
sessions devoted to the Ukraine crisis, where
Russia’s ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, found
himself completely isolated in his legal
interpretation of the unfolding events. Russia’s
moves in Ukraine were not formally approved
by more than a handful of states, and even
some of Russia’s closest allies have refused to
recognise Crimea’s de facto shift injurisdiction.
Russia’s actions also violate its pledge in the
1994 Budapest Memorandum to respect
Ukrainian sovereignty within its existing
borders.
Moscow repeatedly invoked the ‘responsibility
to protect’, an increasingly popular concept in
the West, as a justification for its intervention in
Crimea. However, two factors set Russia’s
Ukrainian intervention apart from previous
interventions carried out by the West: For one,
the formal annexation of territory, which is
entirely unjustifiable in terms of the
‘responsibility to protect’. And secondly, the
fact that there was objectively no humanitarian
crisis that would have warranted invoking this
responsibility. Notwithstanding the alarmist
news broadcast on Russia’s state-controlled
media networks, at the time when Crimea was
seized by Russian forces the peninsula was at
peace and there was no discernible threat to
the lives and well-being of its inhabitants (a
fact that was later confirmed by independent
United Nations investigations).
More recently, arguments focused on Russia’s
‘responsibility to protect’ have featured
particularly prominently in Moscow’s demands
with regard to eastern Ukraine and the
ongoing conflict there. Unlike in Crimea, the
humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine has been
very real indeed. But Russian irregular
combatants were apparently involved in
spurring the conflict in eastern Ukraine from
the very beginning, when heavily armed
gunmen first began to seize administrative
buildings across eastern Ukraine in April 2014,
and there can be little doubt that Moscow has
been stoking it ever since. Moscow has thus
done its part to initiate and aggravate the very
humanitarian crisis that it has since used as a
justification for threatening further
intervention.
Spurious though Moscow’s claims for a
‘responsibility to protect’ may be, its
intervention in Ukraine has ultimately been
based in equal measure on Russia’s purported
historical, ethnic, and cultural claims to Crimea
and (less explicitly) to large stretches of south-
eastern Ukraine frequently referred to as
‘Novorossiya’. Few recent conflicts have been
as centrally focused on historical claims and
(mis)representations as the Ukraine crisis.
Among the Russian public it is commonly
regarded as self-evident that Crimea has
historically been Russian territory, but also that
all of Ukraine is in essence a historical part of
Russia – a brother state that owes its existence
to a mere accident of history. Leaving all legal
concerns aside for a moment, could the case
be made that Russia has a legitimate historical
and cultural claim to Crimea, or any other part
of Ukraine? What does the Russian case for its
interventions in Ukraine look like when taking
into account historical and cultural factors
alone?
Crimea: A “primordially Russian land”
The Crimean peninsula has traditionally had a
special status within modern Ukraine. Unlike
any other part of the country, it was organised
as an ‘Autonomous Republic’, enjoying a
certain degree of political autonomy. Prior to
its formal transfer to the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic in February 1954, Crimea
had been a part of the Russian Soviet
Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) within
the Soviet Union. Among Russians, it is a
commonly-held assumption that Crimea has
‘always’ been a part of Russia.
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Vladimir Putin himself, during his 18 March
address to parliament marking Crimea’s
annexation to Russia, declared that “in
people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always
been an integral part of Russia”. The following
month, an expedition of the Russian Military
Historical Society visited the peninsula, with
one of their stated intentions being “to remind
the global community that Crimea has always
been Russian.” As recently as late October,
Nikolay Ryzhkov, a prominent member of
Russia’s upper house of parliament, claimed
that Crimea “since ancient times … was
primordially Russian land”. This view is now
extremely common in Russia. It is also totally
false.
In actual fact, the Crimean peninsula, for most
of its history, had nothing to do with Russia.
Since antiquity, Crimea’s mountainous south-
eastern shores have been dominated by Tauri,
Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, and
Genoese principalities, before they were
conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1475. The
vast inland steppes of Crimea were ruled and
populated by Scythians, Greeks, Goths, Huns,
Bulgars, Khazars, Mongols, and Karaites, and
eventually, from 1441, formed the heartland of
the Crimean Tatar Khanate, a tributary of the
Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans and the Tatars
continued to rule over their respective parts of
the peninsula until 1783.
Throughout the pre-modern era, Crimea’s only
substantial historical connection to either
Russia or Ukraine was the fact that the inland
section of the peninsula was controlled by the
Kievan Rus’ – the precursor state of both
modern Ukraine and Russia – from the mid-10th
to the early 13th century. At the onset of Kievan
rule (which did not extend to the mountainous
south-eastern parts of the peninsula that
contained its most important settlements and
ports and remained under Byzantine control),
the Crimean city of Chersonesos, now a part of
Sevastopol, was the site where the leader of
the Rus’, Vladimir I. of Kiev, converted to
Christianity.
This was a seminal event in the development of
the Eastern Orthodox churches (both in Russia
and in Ukraine), since Vladimir then oversaw
the conversion of the entire Kievan Rus’ to the
Orthodox faith. Notwithstanding the symbolic
importance of this event, which was duly
invoked by Vladimir Putin in his annexation
speech on 18 March, the period of rule by the
Kievan Rus’ did not leave a deep cultural or
political imprint on Crimea. In the centuries
following the demise of the Rus’ in the 1200s,
the peninsula was the site of sporadic Cossack
raids, but it remained firmly in Tatar and
Ottoman hands. Throughout its history, Crimea
has thus been a crucible of cultures. It was not
until 1783 that it became Russian territory,
following Catherine the Great’s victory over
the Ottomans and her conquest of the Tatar
Khanate, and it remained Russian for the next
170 years.
In 1954, the Soviet leadership transferred
Crimea from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic (UkrSSR). In spite of frequent
claims that the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev,
bypassing all legal norms, single-handedly
assigned the peninsula to Ukraine, the transfer
was in fact carried out legally and in
accordance with the 1936 Soviet Constitution
(which, admittedly, was in essence a legal
fiction). The measure was approved by the
Presidium of the Soviet Communist Party,
paving the way for an authorising resolution of
the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which
formally sealed the transfer; by all
appearances, both the RSFSR and the UkrSSR
gave their consent via their republic
parliaments. Vladimir Putin’s claim, during his 18
March address to parliament, that the decision
to transfer Crimea “was made in clear violation
of the constitutional norms that were in place
even then” is patently false.The 1954 transfer of
Crimea was most likely motivated both by
tactical considerations on the part of
Khrushchev (who was then involved in an
internal power struggle for the leadership of
the Communist Party) and by economic and
infrastructural considerations; the Meeting of
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the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the
USSR on 19 February 1954 where the transfer
was finalised made reference, among other
things, to “the commonality of the economy,
the territorial proximity, and the close
economic and cultural ties between the
Crimean Oblast’ and the Ukrainian SSR”.
For the next six decades, Crimea was formally
a part of Ukraine. Its ties to Kiev always
remained somewhat loose, but much the same
can be said about its ties to Russia throughout
the preceding seventeen decades when it had
been a part of the Russian Empire and the
RSFSR. Throughout most of these 170 years,
while it was politically controlled by Russia,
Crimea had remained culturally distinct, and its
cultural connection with Russia was relatively
tenuous. In spite of substantial Russian
colonisation efforts throughout the 19th
century, around 1900 the Tatars still formed the
largest ethnic group on the peninsula. The
demographic pre-eminence of ethnic Russians
in Crimea was only firmly solidified following
the mass deportation of the entire Crimean
Tatar population, as well as the smaller
populations of ethnic Armenians, Bulgars, and
Greeks, at Joseph Stalin’s behest in 1944. This
de facto ethnic cleansing of the peninsula’s
native inhabitants led to the death of between
20 and 50 percent of the Crimean Tatar
community; the remainder were only able to
return to Crimea in the 1990s.
Crimea has long occupied a special place in
the Russian national consciousness, but this
should not obscure the fact that, while its
historical and cultural connection to Ukraine
has been weak, its historical and cultural
connection to Russia has scarcely been any
stronger. Even a cursory glance at its history
reveals that the recurrent proclamations of
various Russian officials regarding Crimea’s
“primordial” historical and cultural importance
for Russia range from vast exaggeration to
downright fantasy. Given that the Kremlin has
invoked such claims in the attempt to justify a
grave violation of international law and
intrusion upon another sovereign state, it is
important to spotlight how little they
correspond to historical reality.
Taken from
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2015/03/04/does-
russia-have-a-legitimate-claim-to-parts-of-ukraine/
Russia's Little Green Men Enter Ukraine1.
Russia has invaded the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine
and taken over its civilian and military infrastructure.
Not a shot has been fired so far, but Russia is using its
superior force to intimidate Ukrainian troops in
an attempt to get them to surrender.
Russia claims it wants to stabilize the situation on the
peninsula, which has a large Russian population, but
Ukraine's new government regards the move as an
occupation of its sovereign territory.
16WWW.GLOPOIB.WORDPRESS.COM
RUSSIAN ROULETTEVICE NEWS DISPATCHES FROM CRIMEA
2. Sneaking Into A Ukrainian Military Base
Angry crowds of Russia supporters as well as Russian
military units surrounded and entered Ukraine's Naval
High Command in Sevastopol blocking all exits and
demanded that its officers switch allegiance to
Crimea's new Kremlin-aligned government. Naval
Command has so far remained mostly loyal to Kiev, but
its fall would represent a significant psychological
victory for Russian forces.
CLICK ON THE VIDEOS TO WATCH THE REPORTS
3. Getting Stuck on a Ukrainian Battleship
The blockade by Russia of Ukrainian military
installations in Crimea continues. VICE News
correspondent Simon Ostrovsky spoke with families of
personnel barricaded inside, who complained about
the difficulty of getting food past the pro-Russian
protesters outside. Russia's supporters explained why
they want Crimea to separate from Ukraine, andSimon
negotiated his way through a Russian checkpoint to
interview an officer on the Slavutych, a Ukrainian
battleship stuck in the harbor of Sevastopol.
17WWW.GLOPOIB.WORDPRESS.COM
4. Ship Sinked to Block Port
With Crimea's parliament voting to secede from
Ukraine, Russia's blockade of Ukrainian military
installations in the peninsula has moved seaside. The
Russian Black Sea Fleet prepared a special operation:
the sinking of a decommissioned ship in the middle of
Donuzlav Bay in order to prevent traffic in and out of
Crimea's port.
VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky noticed
that the unidentified men in military fatigues had
suddenly disappeared from the bases — locals said
that they'd gone to obstruct a mission of observers
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) from entering the region.
5. Serbian War Veterans Operating in
Crimea
As Russians stream into Crimea to help wrestle it away
from Ukraine, an unlikely group of Serbian war
veterans, who have experience fighting in Bosnia,
Croatia and Kosovo, are turning up at the checkpoints
too. VICE News reporter Simon Ostrovsky follows
Russian troops as they continue their occupation of
Ukrainian military bases, and learns about unidentified
men in masks attacking journalists reporting on the
situation in the peninsula.
18WWW.GLOPOIB.WORDPRESS.COM
6. Reporter''s Confrontation at Ukrainian
Checkpoints
In dispatch six, VICE News correspondent Simon
Ostrovsky travels to the Kherson region of mainland
Ukraine to both the Ukrainian and Russian checkpoints.
At the Ukrainian checkpoint, Simon goes inside one of
their tanks, and speaks to the commander, who says
that despite his Russian blood he will defend all
invaders. But at the Russian checkpoint, the exchange
isn't quite as cordial.
8. Civilians Clash Over Crimea Referendum
As Russia moves 10,000 troops to the Ukrainian border
and Crimea prepares for a secession referendum,
tension remains high all over Ukraine, especially in the
East.
On the night of Thursday, March 13 VICE News reporter
Robert King captured this scene on the streets of
Donetsk, where a large group of pro-Russian activists
attacked a group of pro-Ukrainian demonstrators
calling for unity
7. Pro-Russia & Pro-Ukraine Protesters Face
Off
In dispatch 7, Simon is back in the Crimean capital of
Simferopol, where both pro and anti-Russia
demonstrations are dividing the region. Pro-Russia
protesters believe that the country's strong economy
will help Crimea, while anti-Russia protesters feel that
their land has been taken over by bandits.
9. Protest Turns Fatal
With Crimea's referendum quickly approaching, tension
has spread across Ukraine, especially in the east.
Before Thursday's protests in Donetsk escalated into
violence, VICE News correspondent Robert King
interviewed pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine demonstrators
about their opinions on the standoff
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