In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine, occupied it, and then annexed it after an illegitimate referendum. This took place amid the uncertainty that immediately followed Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity. The invasion marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Crimea's annexation has been described as an instance of modern Russian imperialism. It was the first time since World War II that a European country had annexed part of another, and some analysts see the annexation as the beginning of a Second Cold War between Russia and the West.
The events in Kyiv that ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych on 22 February 2014 sparked both pro- and anti-separatist demonstrations in Crimea. At the same time, Russian president Vladimir Putin told his security chiefs to begin work on "returning Crimea to Russia". On 27 February, Russian special forces without insignia began seizing strategic sites across Crimea. Russia denied involvement at the time, but Putin later admitted that they were Russian troops. As the armed men occupied Crimea's parliament, it dismissed the Crimean government, installed the pro-Russian Aksyonov government, and announced a referendum on Crimea's status. The referendum was held under Russian occupation and did not have an option to keep the status quo. According to the Russian-installed authorities, the result was overwhelmingly in favor of joining Russia. The next day, 17 March 2014, Crimea's authorities declared independence and requested to join Russia. Russia incorporated Crimea on 18 March 2014 as the Republic of Crimea and federal city of Sevastopol. Russia also claimed an exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea around Crimea. This zone is three times bigger than the peninsula and holds vast natural gas and oil reserves. Russia militarized the peninsula and warned against any intervention.
Ukraine and many other countries condemned the annexation as breaking international law and Russian agreements to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The United Nations General Assembly rejected the referendum and annexation, adopting a resolution affirming the "territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders", and deeming Crimea to be under Russian occupation. The other members of the G8 suspended Russia from the group and imposed sanctions on Russia. NATO also suspended co-operation with Russia.
The Russian government opposes the "annexation" label, with Putin defending the referendum as complying with the principle of the self-determination. In his speech marking the annexation, Putin said Crimea had always been Russian and should never have become part of an independent Ukraine.
Other names
In Ukraine
The names of the Crimean annexation vary. In Ukraine, the annexation is known as the temporary occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol by Russia (Ukrainian: тимчасова окупація Автономної Республіки Крим і Севастополя Росією, romanized: tymchasova okupatsiia Avtonomnoi Respubliky Krym i Sevastopolia Rosiieiu), the illegal occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the fall of Crimea, and the invasion of Crimea.
In Russia
In the Russian Federation, it is also known as the accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation (Russian: присоединение Крыма к Российской Федерации, romanized: prisoyedineniye Kryma k Rossiyskoy Federatsii), the return of Crimea (Russian: возвращение Крыма, romanized: vozvrashcheniye Kryma), and the reunification of Crimea.
Background
Crimea was part of the Crimean Khanate from 1441 until it was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783 by a decree of Catherine the Great.
After the downfall of Russian empire in 1917 during the first stages of the Russian Civil War there were a series of short-lived independent governments (Crimean People's Republic, Crimean Regional Government, Crimean SSR). They were followed by White Russian governments (General Command of the Armed Forces of South Russia and later South Russian Government).
In October 1921, the Bolshevik Russian SFSR gained control of the peninsula and instituted the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as a member of Russian Federation. In the following year Crimea joined the Soviet Union as a part of Russia (the RSFSR).
After the Second World War and the 1944 deportation of all of the indigenous Crimean Tatars by the Soviet government, the Crimean ASSR was stripped of its autonomy in 1946 and downgraded to the status of an oblast of the Russian SFSR. In 1954, the Crimean Oblast was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's union with Russia. In 1989, under Gorbachev's perestroika, the Supreme Soviet declared that the deportation of the Crimean Tatars under Stalin had been illegal and the mostly Muslim ethnic group was allowed to return to Crimea.
In 1990, the Soviet of the Crimean Oblast proposed the restoration of the Crimean ASSR. The oblast conducted a referendum in 1991, which asked whether Crimea should be elevated into a signatory of the New Union Treaty (that is, become a union republic on its own). By that time, though, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was well underway. The Crimean ASSR was restored for less than a year as part of Ukrainian SSR before the restoration of Ukrainian independence. Newly independent Ukraine maintained Crimea's autonomous status, while the Supreme Council of Crimea affirmed the peninsula's "sovereignty" as a part of Ukraine.
The confrontation between the government of Ukraine and Crimea deteriorated between 1992 and 1995. In May 1992 the regional parliament declared an independent "Crimean republic." In June 1992, the parties reached a compromise, that Crimea would have considerable autonomy but remain part of Ukraine. Yuri Meshkov, a leader of the Russian movement was elected President of Crimea in 1994 and his party won a majority in the regional parliamentary elections in the same year. The pro-Russian movement was then weakened by internal disagreements and in March 1995 the Ukrainian government gained the upper hand. The office of the elected President of Crimea was abolished and a loyal head of region was installed instead of Meshkov; the 1992 constitution and a number of local laws were repealed. According to Gwendolyn Sasse the conflict was defused due to Crimea's multi-ethnic population, fractures within the pro-Russian movement, Kyiv's policy of avoiding escalation and the lack of active support from Russia.
During the 1990s, the serious dispute over control of the Black Sea Fleet and Crimean naval facilities, as well as the status of Crimea in whole were source of tensions between Russia and Ukraine. In 1992, Vladimir Lukin, then chairman of the Russian Duma's Committee on Foreign Affairs, suggested that to pressure Ukraine to give up its claim to the Black Sea Fleet, Russia should question Ukrainian control over Crimea. In 1998 the Partition Treaty divided the fleet and gave Russia a naval base in Sevastopol, and the Treaty of Friendship recognized the inviolability of existing borders. However, in 2003 Tuzla Island conflict issues over maritime border resurfaced.
In September 2008, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko accused Russia of giving Russian passports to the population in Crimea, and described it as a "real problem", given Russia's declared policy of military intervention abroad to protect Russian citizens.
On 24 August 2009, anti-Ukrainian demonstrations were held in Crimea by ethnic Russian residents. Sergei Tsekov (of the Russian Bloc and then deputy speaker of the Crimean parliament) said then that he hoped that Russia would treat Crimea the same way as it had treated South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Crimea is populated by an ethnic Russian majority and a minority of both ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, and thus demographically possessed one of Ukraine's largest ethnically Russian populations.
As early as in 2010, some analysts already speculated that the Russian government had irredentist plans. Taras Kuzio said that "Russia has an even more impossible time recognizing Ukraine's sovereignty over the Crimea and the port of Sevastopol – as seen by public opinion in Russia, statements by politicians, including members of the ruling United Russia party, experts and journalists". In 2011, William Varettoni wrote that "Russia wants to annex Crimea and is merely waiting for the right opportunity, most likely under the pretense of defending Russian brethren abroad".
Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity
The Euromaidan protest movement began in Kyiv in late November 2013 after President Viktor Yanukovych, of the Party of Regions, failed to sign the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement. Yanukovych won the 2010 presidential election with strong support from voters in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and southern and eastern Ukraine. The Crimean autonomous government strongly supported Yanukovych and condemned the protests, saying they were "threatening political stability in the country". The Crimean autonomous parliament said that it supported the government's decision to suspend negotiations on the pending association agreement and urged Crimeans to "strengthen friendly ties with Russian regions".
On 4 February 2014, the Presidium of the Supreme Council "promised" to consider holding a referendum on the peninsula's status. Speaker Vladimir Klychnikov asked to appeal to the Russian government to "guarantee the preservation of Crimean autonomy". The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) responded by opening a criminal case to investigate the possible "subversion" of Ukraine's territorial integrity. On 20 February 2014, during a visit to Moscow, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Crimea Vladimir Konstantinov stated that the 1954 transfer of Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had been a mistake.
The Euromaidan protests came to a head in late February 2014, and Yanukovych and many of his ministers fled the capital on 22 February. After his flight, opposition parties and defectors from the Party of Regions put together a parliamentary quorum in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament), and voted on 22 February to remove Yanukovych from his post on the grounds that he was unable to fulfill his duties. Arseniy Yatsenyuk was appointed by the Rada to serve as the head of a caretaker government until new presidential and parliament elections could be held. This new government was recognised internationally. Russian government and propaganda have described these events as a "coup d'état" and have said that the caretaker government was illegitimate, while researchers consider the subsequent annexation of Crimea to be a true military coup, because the Russian military seized Crimea's parliament and government buildings and instigated the replacement of its government with Russian proxies.
Annexation
Russian planning
At the end of January 2014, Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev travelled to Crimea with his head of security, former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Igor Girkin (alias 'Strelkov'). Malofeev met with Vladimir Konstantinov, Chairman of the Supreme Council, asking him whether he would be willing to take "more drastic measures" to enforce Crimea's autonomy should there be a revolution. Konstantinov had already met with Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Security Council of Russia, in Moscow in December 2013 where he told Patrushev that if Yanukovych was overthrown, Crimea would be ready to break off and become part of Russia. At the end of January 2014, Konstantinov met with Vladislav Surkov, Putin's adviser on Ukraine. On 4 February, Konstantinov appealed to Putin to guard Crimean autonomy and began preparing a "survey" of Crimeans on what its status should be. Surkov visited Crimea on 14 February, where he might have tried to recruit Crimean prime minister, Anatolii Mohyliov, for the Russian cause.
In early February 2014, before the Ukrainian revolution, the Kremlin received a strategy paper outlining plans for the annexation of Crimea. It was reportedly part-written by Malofeev, and was published a year later by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. The documents said that the Ukrainian government and president Viktor Yanukovych were "totally bankrupt" and would not last. They proposed that Russia should foster separatism in Crimea and other eastern provinces, and should begin work on taking control of them. The documents outlined plans for starting pro-Russian protests and a public relations campaign to justify a Russian takeover.
On 21 February 2014, Ukrainian president Yanukovych secretly fled the capital. Russia's leadership worried that its naval base in Crimea might be at risk under a new Ukrainian government that was committed to closer ties with the West. On 22–23 February 2014, Russian president Putin held an all-night meeting with security chiefs to discuss the crisis. At the end of that meeting, Putin said: "we must start working on returning Crimea to Russia".
The GRU and FSB then began organizing sympathizers in Crimea to ensure that when the operation began there would be armed "local self‑defense groups" on the streets for support. In January 2014, the city council of Sevastopol—home of Russia's naval base in Crimea—had called for the formation of "people's militia" units to "ensure firm defence" of the city from "extremism".
According to political scientist Daniel Treisman, Putin may have begun planning to take Crimea even before Yanukovych was ousted. A source close to the commander of the operation said that Russian special forces in the port of Novorossiysk and the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol had already been put on alert on 18 February. Participants in the operation were later awarded a medal "For the Return of Crimea", which is engraved with 20 February as the start date of the operation.
Early unrest
The February 2014 Revolution of Dignity that ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych sparked a political crisis in Crimea, which initially manifested as demonstrations against the new interim Ukrainian government, but rapidly escalated.