WHY CRIMEA MATTERS

You might have seen the recent news of Ukrainian strikes on russian military objects in occupied Crimea. Do you know why Ukraine is so set on taking it back? Or are you wondering why russia is so fixated on occupying and holding it in the first place? In fact this story is not new: empires have been trying to invade Crimea for thousands of years, back to Byzantine empire and Ancient Greece. For the empires, the peninsula’s location and climate have made it prime agricultural and commerce territory, a strategic military location, as well as a desirable vacation destination for the wealthy—nobles in the past, oligarchs in the present. Yet for others like Crimean Tatars - it is their ancestral homeland, the place where their parents grew up and where their kids should be raised. And this is just one of the reasons Ukraine is fighting to liberate Crimea.

Russia’s long history of raiding and annexing Crimea began long before the turn of the 20th century, but the current fight over that peninsula is commonly traced back to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 when, in the wake of the collapse of the Russian Empire (1721-1917), the peninsula’s remaining Crimean Tatars declared Crimea an independent democratic republic. Their resolution was short lived.

After the Russian Civil War (1918-1920), Crimea was reorganized as the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1921). During the ensuing Soviet collectivization and russification process, tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars perished and, by the start of WW2 (Sept. 1, 1939-Sept. 2, 1945), less than 20 percent of Crimea’s 1.1 million-person population was Tatar. For the next 20 or so years, the Tatar population remained just over 200,000, but by the end of May 1944, even that chaned. During the spring of 1944, Stalin again went after the Crimean Tatars, forcibly deporting more than 200,000 people to Siberia and Central Asia.

Stalin’s pretense for the mass deportation? The Crimean Tatar’s alleged collaboration with the Nazis during the war. (This pretense is now commonly accepted as a complete fabrication, and many historians have pointed out the similarities between Stalin and putin’s ruthless pretenses and actions.) “All of these people lost their homes and property; they were replaced by settlers from the rest of the USSR, usually Russians. It was thanks to this rather recent ethnic cleansing that Crimea became Russian in population,” writes Tim Snyder in “Russia’s Crimea Disconnect,” a must-read for anyone interested in understanding Crimea’s long history and how that history’s  influence on the modern invasion.1

The year after the mass deportation (1945), Crimea was downgraded from an autonomous republic to an oblast (region) of the USSR. Then, in 1954—a year after Stalin’s death and under the authority of Nikita Krushchev—the Crimean oblast was transferred from the Russian Republic of the USSR to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Krushchev’s geographic and economic reasons for doing so were logistical, but this was a key turning point in Ukraine’s future as a sovereign nation.2

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, every Ukrainian region overwhelmingly voted for independence—except Crimea, where only a small majority (54 percent) of the largely Russian population voted in favor of Ukrainian independence. Even so, it was enough for Ukraine to gain its independence. In the years following the dissolution of the USSR, the number of Crimean Tatars grew from some 38,000 in 1989 to roughly 300,000 at the turn of the 21st century. 3

While the vote for independence affirmed the Ukrainian population’s drive for autonomy, Russia had yet to fully let go of control and the evolving Ukrainian political structure had yet to gain the trust of the international community. A key first step forward was taken in December 1994, when Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum; this agreement committed the signatories to respect Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders. Then, in 1997, the signing of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership (1997) affirmed Crimea as Ukrainian territory. This treaty included a russian lease on the port of Sevastopil, which had served as the main base of russia’s Black Sea fleet since the 19th century.

This portion of the treaty was renewed in 2010 by Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-russian Ukrainian president who became a catalyst for Euromaidan (2013) when he wouldn’t sign a political and free trade agreement with the European Union. The protests culminated with the Revolution of Dignity (February 18-23, 2014), during which upheaval and violent clashes between military police and protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square finally led Yanukovych to flee Kiev. 4 

Within days of his ousting in 2014, russian troops seized the Crimean parliament and installed the leader of the Russian Unity Party, Sergey Aksyonov, as prime minister. During the following month, putin sent in additional troops, took control of the peninsula and staged elections in which the Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, a vote that was boycotted by Crimean Tatar leaders. The vote was not recognized by Kyiv, the United States and the EU immediately moved to impose sanctions on high-ranking officials and members of the self-declared Crimean government, and the United Nations pronounced that Crimea remained part of Ukraine. To this day, international law designates russia as an “occupying power in Crimea.” 5

For a comprehensive understanding of Crimea’s history, as well as a leading Eastern Europe historian’s personal take on we recommend taking the time to read historian Tim Snyder’s article, "Russia's Crimea Disconnect."

1 2 3 4 5 The facts for this article were researched online, with the majority of the historic facts and dates coming from Brittanica.com.