“His return will mean the restoration of true peace,” Zelensky declared in October. “When the Ukrainian flag returns to its rightful place, the cities and villages of Crimea, any possibility of Russian aggression will be completely destroyed.”
But for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the annexation of Crimea has become a pillar of his legacy, which would crumble if he lost the peninsula. He suggested that any Ukrainian effort to retake Crimea would cross a line he would not tolerate.
Ukraine’s hopes of retaking Crimea have long seemed like a far-fetched fantasy.
The West supports Ukraine, but fears that Ukrainian forces’ incursion into Crimea could spur President Putin to drastic action, possibly even using a nuclear bomb. Some Western officials hope that a deal to renounce Crimea to Russia could be the basis for a diplomatic end to the war. Ukrainians dismiss the idea as dangerously naive, but Russians say they are no longer content with what they have.
Its unwavering claim to Crimea demonstrates the difficulty of the conflict, and it is hard to imagine the dispute over the peninsula being resolved without further bloodshed.
The shocking attack on the Crimean bridge in early October, a $4 billion attack that symbolized Putin’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine, prompted the Kremlin to bolster Moscow’s relentless bombing campaign against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. and now threaten to plunge the country into a humanitarian crisis.
After Kiev liberated Kherson, Moscow vowed “Russia forever,” but Russian officials stepped up their rhetoric. Former President Dmitry Medvedev has promised a “judgment day” in the event of an attack on Crimea, but Russian parliamentarians have warned of a “final devastating blow”.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is drawing up detailed plans for reintegrating Crimea, including the expulsion of thousands of Russian citizens who have emigrated to Crimea since 2014.
“With a few rare exceptions, absolutely all Russian citizens who came to Crimea arrived illegally on Crimean territory,” said Zelensky’s Permanent Representative to Crimea, Tamira Tasheva. “So we have one approach: all these Russian citizens must leave.”
Russia has its own maximalist views, demanding the surrender of four other Ukrainian regions that President Putin illegally declared annexation: Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
The refusal of either side to back down threatens to turn wars into decades-long conflicts, like the territorial disputes over the West Bank and Gaza, Nagorno-Karabakh or Kurdistan.
Crimea has been hotly disputed for centuries. Greeks, Mongols, Ottomans and his Turks all claimed ownership of this Black Sea gem. Russia and the Ottoman Empire fought a war over it before Catherine II annexed her in 1783 and absorbed Crimea into the Russian Empire.
As in the Soviet and Tsarist times, Crimea became a favorite resort for the Russian elite.Stalin brutally repressed the Crimean Tatars, About 200,000 people were deported to Central Asia and Siberia after accusing them of collaborating with Nazi Germany. That persecution has shaped the politics of the peninsula for decades.
In 1954, ostensibly to mark the 300th anniversary of Ukraine’s accession to Russia, but also for important economic reasons, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Crimea became an autonomous region of Ukraine, mandated to Kiev, but with its own constitution and Ukrainian, Russian and Crimean Tatar as official languages.
The 1990s were marked by quarrels between Kiev and Moscow, one of the causes of which was the Kremlin’s demand that Sevastopol retain its Black Sea Fleet. But among the Crimeans, resentment against Kiev grew. The peninsula struggled economically. Many residents, predominantly Russians, felt neglected and nostalgic for the Soviet era.
In 2014, Russian troops invaded Crimea days after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled in response to the Maidan revolution. Russia-backed authorities swiftly organized an illegal referendum on annexation, which was achieved in a swift process that Putin hoped would be repeated this year with the conquest of Kiev.
The annexation was so popular in Russia that President Putin’s approval ratings skyrocketed. “Many of the imperial predictions about Russia, the entire founding myth, are centered in Crimea,” said Gwendolyn Sasse, an analyst at Carnegie Europe.
In a speech at the time, Putin said, “In people’s minds, Crimea has always been inseparable from Russia. But the annexation was a violation of international law, and the West quickly imposed sanctions .
For eight years, the fate of Crimea was overshadowed by a war in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, fueled by pro-Russian separatists. But Zelensky had begun drawing up plans for the liberation and reintegration of Crimea from occupation long before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February.
In 2021, his government will set up an annual summit called the Crimean Platform. Tasheva, a Crimean Tatar, became Zelensky’s Crimea representative in April. And now he leads a team of 40 people working on a blueprint to overthrow the annexation.
“It is imperative that Ukraine has a step-by-step plan … ready,” Tasheva said in an interview, referring to a long list of complex issues related to justice and civil rights during the transition. rice field.
An estimated 100,000 residents fled Crimea after Russia’s annexation, but the majority remained in Crimea, joined by hundreds of thousands of Russians who were encouraged to settle there.Russian authorities since 2014 has issued passports to many of the peninsula’s 2.4 million citizens.
Tasheva said that the Crimeans who stayed “had the right to do so”, those who actively cooperated with the Russian authorities after the deoccupation and those who probably voted for annexation but became what Tasheva called Efforts will be made to distinguish between victim of propaganda. “
“These people haven’t committed a crime,” she said. “They just had their own opinions.”
But she said all Russian citizens who entered illegally after 2014 must leave the country. “This is a matter of our safety,” said Tasheva. “If all these Russian citizens remain on Crimean territory, they will always threaten the territorial integrity of our country.”
Laurie Finnin, Associate Professor of Ukrainian Studies, University of Cambridge, He said a compromise was unlikely.
“The idea that somehow Ukraine should return to its post-2014 status quo is absurd. The moral and geopolitical issues of such abandonment are serious.”
Russia, too, is keen to maintain control over Crimea, raising concerns among Western officials about the extreme measures Putin may take to retain it.
Nikolai Petrov, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a London-based policy institute, said it was “out of the question” for Putin to abandon Crimea, a reunification that Zelensky loudly clarified. He said the policy was one of the “triggers” of Putin’s aggression.
“The creation of the Crimean platform and the West’s authorization to use this card has started a very dangerous game,” Petrov said. “Ultimately that led to this war.”
In a recent interview, former British Army Chief of Staff Sir David Richards said Ukraine would risk nuclear war to defend Crimea. “If you rub Putin’s nose, he can do some really stupid things,” Richards told Times Radio. “He can use tactical nuclear weapons.”
Still, some Western officials remain hopeful that a Crimean deal could be key to ending the war, and Zelensky and his advisers see more potential than their rhetoric suggests. I believe that we should be more open to sensible concessions.
At the first peace talks in March, Kiev suggested it was willing to hold separate negotiations on the status of Crimea, threatening Zelensky to treat Crimea differently from what he claims are other Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine. heightened.
Sir Richards said: “There could be some deal with Crimea, a properly monitored and conducted referendum, perhaps a sort of Hong Kong deal that would be allowed to stay in Russian hands for years.” rice field.
Eight years later, Crimea has been isolated by international sanctions. Its airport, once a hub for summer travelers from all over Europe and beyond, now serves only flights to mainland Russia.
The Kremlin initially funded local infrastructure projects and pension schemes, including the Crimean Bridge. He also imposes Russian state propaganda as his primary source. Russian tourists have returned, but the peninsula is struggling economically and is now led by a repressive government installed by Moscow. Especially the Crimean Tatars face persecution.
Given that access to Crimea is restricted and controlled by Russian state media, it is difficult to determine public opinion there and whether that has changed in response to the war.
Yet many believe that the war that started in Crimea must end in Crimea.
“Before the war, I thought the Crimea problem would take decades to resolve, but today it’s clear,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Russian oil tycoon and longtime Putin critic. “It is difficult to imagine a true end to the war without the return of Crimea to Ukraine.”
