Crimea: Overview

Introduction

In November 2013, violent clashes between government forces and pro-European protesters broke out in Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine. The government of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was soon ousted amid the violence, and a new, pro–European Union government was installed. Ukraine struggled to establish order, but pro-Russian militants began making gains in Crimea, widening the conflict.

The crisis in Ukraine is not just a domestic conflict. Russia has intervened in the area, giving weapons and support to the pro-Russian militants in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Accusations have flown between Russia, Europe, and the United States. Meanwhile, the Crimean government, which was put into power by the militants, declared the region's independence from Ukraine and held a referendum on whether to rejoin Russia. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor, and Russia annexed Crimea, an action few nations have recognized as legitimate. At the same time, armed conflict between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine continued.

The crisis in Ukraine has a number of key implications for the international community. There are legal questions regarding voluntary annexation, as well as the issue of Russia's unilateral intervention in the affairs of a sovereign nation. Russia's relationships with the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the United States have been strained, with many onlookers expressing concern about a resurgent nationalist Russia and its interests in eastern Europe. These concerns intensified in November 2021, when Russia began massing military forces on its border with Ukraine. Diplomatic efforts failed to deescalate this buildup, which Russia claimed was necessary to protect Russian people in eastern Ukraine. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, escalating the conflict into open warfare between the two nations and bringing the crisis to dangerous new levels.

Understanding the Discussion

Annexation: A term used when territory from one country is acquired or incorporated into the territory of another.

Crimea: A peninsula located in the Black Sea, joined to Ukraine to the north but very close to Russian territory to the east. It has been part of Ukraine since 1954.

Euromaidan: The name given to the 2013-14 protest movement that began in Independence Square in Kyiv; derived from the Ukrainian Yevromaidan, or "Euro square."

European Union (EU): An international union of certain European governments, dedicated to creating a common economic, security, political, and social network among the nations of Europe.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): A mutual defense alliance of certain European and North American nations.

Sanctions: In the case of international diplomacy, a ban on selling or trading goods between countries. Sanctions are established by one nation to elicit a change in behavior from another.

History

Ukraine's geographic position is highly significant. Bordering Russia to the east and several central and eastern European countries to the north and west—four of which (Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia) are members of NATO—Ukraine is in part a buffer between Europe and Russia.

Furthermore, Ukraine is a former Soviet state, and many in Russia were and continue to be opposed to its departure from the Soviet Union in 1991.

After Viktor Yanukovych was elected president of Ukraine in 2010, his administration was marred by charges of corruption and brutality. Seeking foreign capital to bolster the Ukrainian economy, Yanukovych reached out to both the European Union and Russia, but in November 2013, under pressure from Russia, he opted not to enter into a formal agreement with the EU.

There was already growing unrest across the country over Yanukovych's alleged corruption and harsh treatment of opposition groups; his refusal to come to an agreement with the cash-strong EU ignited this tinderbox, setting off nationwide protests by pro-European activists.

On the evening of November 21, the same day the EU agreement was suspended, pro-European protesters began to gather in Kyiv's Independence Square, calling for closer ties with Europe. The movement was soon dubbed Euromaidan—"Euro" for Europe and "maidan" (square) in reference to Independence Square. Many protesters demanded that Yanukovych resign for failing to sign the agreement. On November 30, after nine days of demonstrations, a Ukrainian special police force known as Berkut entered the square and violently dispersed the protesters, most of whom were university students. The next day, riots broke out throughout downtown Kyiv in response.

In the weeks following the riots, peaceful protests continued in Independence Square and throughout the country, met occasionally by violent response from the police. Tensions culminated on February 18, when approximately twenty thousand people advanced on Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, in support of a vote to revert Ukraine's constitution to the 2004 version, which included provisions limiting the president's powers that were later overturned. The protesters were met with police blockades, sparking an eruption of violence that grew into a revolution. Four days later, Yanukovych disappeared from office. The Verkhovna Rada elected pro-European Oleksandr Turchynov as interim president, and an arrest warrant was issued for Yanukovych.

The largely Russian-speaking population of Crimea, an autonomous republic within Ukraine, was wary of the Euromaidan movement, which had seen greater involvement by nationalist groups. On February 23, protests against the new government broke out in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.

There were allegations that Russian troops in unmarked uniforms were present in the area, which Russian president Vladimir Putin first denied and later acknowledged.

Starting on February 26, pro-Russian militants, including some unidentified Russian troops, seized key government buildings in Crimea. The following day, while armed militants occupied the building, the Crimean parliament held an emergency session in which they voted to dismiss the current government and replace the prime minister with a member of the Russian Unity party. Some members of parliament reported instances of coercion and fraudulent votes.

On March 16, 2014, the Crimean parliament held a referendum on whether to join the Russian Federation. The result was a nearly 97 percent return in favor, and the Russian government recognized the results, annexing Crimea on March 18. However, international legal experts and political leaders alike denounced the vote and the subsequent annexation as illegal, as it did not conform with the Ukrainian constitution, and the presence of Russian military forces cast doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral results. The Ukrainian government in Kyiv rejected the vote's validity but vowed not to use military force in the region.

Meanwhile, pro-Russian separatists began agitating in the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the situation devolved into armed conflict between the separatists and Ukrainian government forces. In May 2014, the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic each declared independence from Ukraine, and received military aid from Russia in their conflict with the Ukrainian government.

The Crisis in Ukraine Today

Petro Poroshenko was elected president of Ukraine in May 2014 and took office in June, replacing acting president Turchynov. Meanwhile, the focus of the conflict in Ukraine has shifted away from the Euromaidan movement and toward direct confrontation between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern and southern portions of the country. Ukrainians are torn between the European Union in the west and Russia in the east. Both sides have made overtures to support the Ukrainian economy, mainly through infusions of capital and security agreements. The two main factions within Ukraine have actively pursued forging new social and cultural relationships—or, in the case of Russia, revitalizing old ones. Meanwhile, since 2014, Russia has administered Crimea as two Russian federal subjects: the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol. Russia amended its constitution to list Crimea and Sevastopol among its federal subjects, and since 2015 the Russian ruble has been the only legal currency in Crimea.

On September 5, 2014, representatives of Ukraine, Russia, and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics signed the Minsk Protocol, agreeing to halt the war in the Donbass region (the far eastern part of Ukraine where Donetsk and Luhansk are located), but this had little effect. Polling places being shut down due to threats of violence remained a problem during Ukraine’s first post-revolutionary parliamentary elections in October 2014. In November of that year, the Donbass region held elections of its own to appoint chief executives and parliaments for the internationally unrecognized Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Russia was the only country to recognize the results of the election. That month, NATO commander Gen. Phillip Breedlove said that Russian troops, tanks and artillery were being sent across the border into Ukraine in large numbers, but Russia denied this.

Representatives of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany agreed to a new set of measures to end the conflict, called Minsk II, on February 11, 2015, but attempts to bring about a ceasefire were again unsuccessful—by February 20, according to Ukraine’s National Defense and Security Council, there had already been three hundred violations of the ceasefire. At least two hundred Ukrainian soldiers and five hundred civilians had been killed by the time Ukrainian forces retreated in late February.

A third attempt at peace talks in Minsk took place in May 2015. Both sides reaffirmed their support for the Minsk II agreement, but once more, fighting continued. In June the European Union voted to extend sanctions against Russia until such time as the country began complying with the terms of Minsk II, and in July the United States added twenty-six individuals, including associates of Putin and former members of the Yanukovych government, to its list of sanctioned entities. The fighting eventually subsided, but the crisis was not solved. Further rounds of fighting alternating with ceasefires continued into 2017. By early 2019, a total of approximately thirteen thousand people, civilian and military, had been killed since April 2014 in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, according to a United Nations human rights monitoring mission.

As physical conflict continued, by 2019 Ukraine was also caught up in a political scandal with the United States that caused concern over the future of the conflict. After a whistle-blower in the United States claimed that US president Donald Trump had, in a phone call, requested that the newly elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, investigate Trump's political opponent and Democratic candidate for the presidency Joe Biden, and a transcript was released that seemed to support the claim, debates ensued about the fact that the Trump administration had temporarily withheld funds meant to aid Ukraine's defense against separatist conflict and whether there was a correlation. This revelation further tainted confidence in Zelensky's campaign platform to end the conflict, as the country's military has relied heavily upon US aid and support. Critics had already lambasted his agreement to a proposed deal in which elections, held according to international standards, could take place in separatist regions as well as his decision to pull back several troops from the front lines.

Despite Zelensky's 2019 campaign promise to end the conflict, fighting continued in eastern Ukraine through 2020 and into 2021. In November 2021, Russia began to mass soldiers and military equipment on its border with Ukraine, leading to fears that Putin planned to order an invasion. As diplomatic efforts to avert war began, Russia made a number of demands to the US and its allies, namely a promise that NATO would never admit Ukraine as a member; most of these demands were immediately rejected. These attempts at diplomacy involved the US and a number of its European allies and continued into February 2022, but failed to find a solution. On February 21, Putin gave a speech recognizing the independence of two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic, and shortly afterwards ordered the deployment of Russian "peacekeeping" soldiers into those regions. Three days later, on February 24, Russia announced a military operation against Ukraine and launched an invasion of the country, escalating the ongoing crisis into a full-scale war.

Experts point to the strategic value of Ukraine to both sides as a contributor to the conflict. Since the days of the Soviet Union, Russia has long had military bases in Ukraine, including one in Sevastopol, which houses Russia's famed Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine also borders on Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland, all of which became members of NATO, an adversary of the former Soviet Union, during the 1990s and early 2000s. Ukraine therefore represents to Russia a buffer between itself and NATO, while NATO views it as a potential ally directly bordering Russia, which has demonstrated increased Russian nationalism and anti-Western sentiment under Putin's presidency. Ukraine's strategic position, as well as Russian concerns about an expansion of NATO and lingering resentment over the 2014 Euromaidan protests, likely contributed to Putin's decision to invade in February 2022.

Bibliography

"‘Between Hammer and Anvil’: A Humanitarian Crisis in Europe." America. vol. 213, no. 4, 2015, p. 8.

Dejevsky, Mary. "Ukraine, Russia and the West Are Losing Their Appetite for War." Independent. 18 Sept. 2015.

Kelly, Laura. "Putin Recognizes Independence of Ukraine Breakaway Regions." The Hill. BBC, 21 Feb. 2022, thehill.com/policy/international/595189-putin-to-recognize-independence-of-ukraine-breakaway-regions. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022.

Kingsley, Patrick. "The Ukraine Crisis: What to Know About Why Russia Attacked." The New York Times, 24 Feb. 2022, www.nytimes.com/article/ukraine-russia-putin.html?. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022.

Rainsford, Sarah. "Crimea Tension: What Is Russia's End Game?" BBC News. BBC, 14 Aug. 2016. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37074732. Accessed 16 Sept. 2016.

Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine 16 November 2018 to 15 February 2019. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2019, www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/UA/ReportUkraine16Nov2018-15Feb2019.pdf. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.

Schwirtz, Michael, and Andrew E. Kramer. "Ukraine’s President: ‘I Wanted to Be World Famous,’ but Not This Way." The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/world/europe/ukraine-trump-zelensky-burisma-blackmail.html. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.

Shuster, Simon. "Man in the Middle." Time. 23 June 2014, pp. 36-39.

"Ukraine Crisis Timeline." BBC News, 25 June 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26248275. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022.

"Ukraine Puts Army on Alert as Russia Heats Up Crimea Stalemate." NBC News. NBC News, 11 Aug. 2016. www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/ukraine-puts-army-alert-russia-heats-crimea-stalemate-n628321. Accessed 16 Sept. 2016.

United States. Dept. of Energy. Energy Information Administration. "Ukraine." US Energy Information Administration. Dept. of Energy, Mar. 2014. Accessed 25 June 2014.

Williams, Carol J. "Ukraine-Russia Tension Rises over Separatist Powers, Expulsions." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 17 July 2015. Accessed 14 Oct. 2015.