Crimea

~ Clarissa

Sandra Heine Merchant asked about Crimea. This is an important but also a very sad issue.

My colleague, the political scientist, says she has resigned herself to the possibility that the Crimea will be annexed by Russia within two weeks under the pretext of “protecting” Russians.

All I see on the subject of the Crimea in Western media is the boring and idiotic discussion of “whose land this was initially.” As I always say on the subject of Israel, such conversations drive me up a wall. Which ethnic group “owns” land by right of original settlement is beyond irrelevant. None of us will ever figure out where we should go if we start reorganizing the world on this basis.

So let’s move away from this silliness and discuss what is really at stake. When Ukraine agreed to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, this was done on one enormously important condition. The condition is that if Ukraine agrees to live by the side of a huge nuclear power without any nuclear weapons of its own, the international community will guarantee that it will protect the sovereignty of Ukraine within its borders such as they were at the time of the signing of Budapest accords.

After the fall of the USSR, Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world. Its nuclear arsenal was bigger than those of China, UK and France combined. And you know what Ukraine did with all those weapons? It send them to Russia. In 1994, the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances guaranteed, in exchange, that Ukraine’s 1994 borders would be respected. The United States offered to uphold that guarantee.

Handing over your entire nuclear arsenal to the country that has always been and is now the greatest aggressor against your sovereignty is a pretty big sacrifice, don’t you think? And Ukraine made this sacrifice to ensure global peace and stability. If the guarantors of this deal did not think that the Crimea region legitimately belonged to Ukraine, they should have raised that issue before the country relinquished all means of defending itself from Russia. It is an absolute mockery of the very idea of international law and the diplomatic process to start now discussing that well, maybe the Crimea should not be Ukrainian after all.

It is absolutely appalling that a country should enter into diplomatic agreements in good faith, fulfill everything it took upon itself to do, and then be abandoned to its fate. This is unconscionable.

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Published by Clarissa

27 thoughts on “Crimea”

  1. In practice, there’s no real diference between “international law” and “treaties” and agreements in the mafia. Agreements are honored only as long as they’re convenient for the more powerful partner.

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  2. Russia invading Ukraine would be a serious violation of international law and would result in serious repercussions for Russia. Therefore, I don’t see them doing any such thing, it really is against their own best interest. I mean, other than adding more land to their already ridiculously massive country, what would they get out of it? It just seems to me that from Russia’s point of view the cons far out weight the cons. What am I missing?

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    1. Yes, because when they invaded Georgia just a few years ago, there were enormous repercussions. Huge. I mean, a couple of US politicians mewled impotently that this wasn’t good. I’m sure Putin is still shaking in his boots at the memory of those serious repercussions.

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    2. Most of Russia’s massive land, by the way, is either permafrost or barren. And the ruble has been plummeting since last week. I’m sure you can see how a neat little territorial gain would distract people in Russia from their problems.

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      1. Perhaps I’m an optimist, but I just don’t see such a thing flying today. Maybe in the days of the Cold War, but it just seems to me like we have left those days behind. Even in the Russia-Georgia conflict, Russia pulled out and Georgia is today a sovereign nation and basically nothing changed.

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    3. –Russia invading Ukraine would be a serious violation of international law and would result in serious repercussions for Russia.

      As much repercussions as US faced for invading Iraq.
      And it is not about land. It is about Putin not looking weak in the eyes of his “reference group”, real or imaginary. It is also useful to remember that Russians in the former soviet republics, including Ukraine, tend to be more imperialist and russian-nationalist than Russians in Russia. So Putin may not want to abandon a bunch of his more loyal subjects (mentally, not necessarily de jure) and to send a signal to the rest of them that he is not going to protect them.

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  3. Another interesting tidbit: losing Crimea would also lose Ukraine the access to quite a few of the natural gas deposits in the Black Sea, the exploitation of which could have brought Ukraine natural gas independence from Russia. One of the major ways through which Russia influences politics in Europe is by raising or lowering gas prices, so it *really* doesn’t like this whole exploit-all-the-natural-gas-deposits thing that has started in various EE countries.

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  4. Thank you for your response, Clarissa. I have shared it with my “Germans and Swiss from the Crimea” Facebook group, which is ostensibly a genealogy/family finder group. It is important, though that we understand what is going on and what the outlook is. A couple of us were going to travel to Crimea to visit our family villages in May. Sadly, we thought it best to wait and watch. Maybe next year. Or maybe we’ll visit our villages in western Ukraine…maybe.

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  5. Well guys, it was nice to read your comments, but as someone from Crimea, I assure you, that Crimean people want to belong to Russia. A huge majority in Crimea is Russian and not Ukrainian. We are of Russian nationality and culture and we also speak Russian. The most Crimeans don’t accept Ukrainian as an official language as well as they don’t want to adapt to Ukrainian culture. Giving Crimea back to Russia is like returning home for Crimeans

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    1. When I wanted to be Canadian, I moved to Canada. You, however, don’t choose to move to the country to which you want to “belong.” Instead, you seem to want it to invade. Who cares that people might die, right? As long as you are had by an owner of your chossing, then it’s all good. Right?

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      1. To be fair to Russian separatists in Crimea, I must admit that analogies with recent immigrants are not very appropriate here. Russians have lived in Crimea for generations, just like Ukrainians and Tatars. The closest match to Russians in the former soviet republics are anglophones in Quebec (or anywhere else in the British Commonwealth, for that matter, but Quebec is the only place where somebody attempts to discriminate anglophones as part of local majority’s nation-building efforts… and indeed, as Otto said below, the Native Americans are equivalent of Crimean Tatars in this scheme).
        In both cases we are dealing with people who moved around a single empire (mostly just looking for better life), and later within some large part of the former empire (Canada), and ended up in a state which gained independence or quasi-independence (Quebec). Without making a conscious decision to immigrate into this new independent state. And this is an important point – conscious choices and results of events beyond one’s control are different from personal responsibility perspective. In most cases these people were born where they live now. If I get fed up with Quebec I’ll leave. But I was not born here, my ancestors did not live here, etc.
        I tend to believe that in these conditions minorities (including those of “imperial origin”) have some right to resist the nation-building efforts of the majority if the majority goes too far in its nation-building. (Unless, of course, we want to open a Pandora’s box of collective genetics-based responsibility for the wrongdoings of the empire.) Armed separatism and inviting foreign intervention are extremes which I do not support, but there is some legitimacy in Crimean separatism. Just as there is some legitimacy in emerging Montreal separatism.
        It probably would help in reducing Crimean separatism if Ukrainian central government acknowledged something along the above lines.

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        1. There was absolutely no nation-building of any kind in Ukraine after, I’d say, 1992. I would have never emigrated had I seen any interest towards it. I waited until 1998, but then it was obvious that the thing was hopeless. I even considered moving to Lviv until I realized that the “real Ukraine” that was supposedly located in the Western part of the country was a myth.

          I have also failed to notice anything that would even remotely rise to the level of discrimination against Russian-speakers. All of my relatives in Ukraine and my parents’ friends are Russian-speakers. All are passionately pro-Russia and anti-Ukrainian. And enormous drama queens. 🙂 So if there’d been a whiff of any discrimination in their direction, we’d have heard about it. To the contrary, the garbage these people say about Ukrainians has never, as far as I know, been said to them by any Ukrainian-speakers.

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    2. “most Crimeans don’t accept Ukrainian as an official language”

      Crimeans poor language skills are not the world’s problem.

      “Giving Crimea back to Russia”

      Russia gave up any claim to Crimea almost 20 years ago. Accept that and make your choices (stay and be part of Ukraine or pull up stakes and go to Russia).

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      1. “Crimeans poor language skills are not the world’s problem.”

        – Good point. 🙂

        A Russian man asked on Facebook under a photo of people in Crimea marching under Russian flags, ‘I’m sorry, are they aware that public protesting is illegal in Russia?’

        At this moment, participants in the peaceful protests in Moscow in May of 2012 are on trial. Those who came to the courthouse to support them are also on trial. And I’m sure that tomorrow those who support those who supported. . . will also be on trial.

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      2. Khrushchev had the Crimean Oblast transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954, a lot longer than 20 years ago. At any rate missing from this conversation is the fact that some 15% of the population are the indigenous Crimean Tatars who have been overwhelmingly in support of Crimea being part of Ukraine rather than Russia since 1991. Like First Nations in Canada, Native Americans in the US, and Aboriginals in Australia the indigenous connection of the Crimean Tatars to the land should give them a larger consideration than their percentage in the population alone would merit. Especially since they are a small minority because the Tsarist government pushed most of them out to the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s after the Crimean War. The Stalin regime finished this project in 1944 by deporting almost the entire population to Uzbekistan and the Urals.

        http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2007/05/18-may-1944-deportation-of-crimean.html

        http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2006/05/stalins-ethnic-cleansing-of-crimean.html

        http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2009/05/sixty-five-years-since-deportation-of.html

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      3. Russians were a minority of the Crimean population in 1926, only 42.6% of the population. In 1863, 85% of Crimea was non-Russian. Crimean Tatars were the vast majority of the population then. The reason Russians are a majority today has everything to do with ethnic cleansing and colonialism in the very recent past. Prior to the Crimean War in 1853-1856 they were a tiny minority compared to the indigenous population. But, even in the last census (1939) before the total deportation of the Crimean Tatars, Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians, Russians were still a minority of the total population of Crimea. They only become a majority as a result of the 1944 deportations and the deliberate settlement of Russian colonists on the property formerly owned mostly by Crimean Tatars, but also Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, and Germans deported in 1941. There is also the matter of the property of the Jews including the Crimean Tatar speaking Krymchaks murdered by the Nazis and appropriated for Russian settlers after Soviet rule is restored. So while there are some Russians whose families have lived in Crimea as long as Germans, early 1800s. There are none that were there as long as the Greek or Armenian settlements and the Crimean Tatar nationality developed on the territory long before Russian settlement. The current population balance of Russians being a majority is very recent, from 1945 on and the result of deliberate population transfers by the Soviet government.

        http://www.iccrimea.org/population.html

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        1. Enormous efforts were made to make sure that the percentage of “ethnic Russians” (although that’s a very silly term that has little basis in reality) grows in all the republics of the USSR.

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  6. So having read your comment on the subject of Crimea Blog, I would felt pleased with that agreement in mind Crimea cannot be taking apart regardless of any actions Russian may propose.

    If that is true then my questions is; could Russia ignore an agreement and take over Crimea?

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    1. “could Russia ignore an agreement and take over Crimea?”

      – Of course, it can. Because it doesn’t expect any sanctions. And correctly so because there won’t be any sanctions, like there weren’t when Russia invaded Georgia.

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  8. Hi Clarissa,
    My name is Eugene I live in Alaska and I have a queston, it seem this day showed that the Russian troops already arrived & occupied Crimea, some called it “Invasion” others called it security measures for Ethnic Russians.

    US president Obama spent the day talking with President Putin on convincing him to withdraw his troops but I don’t think Putin will change his course of actions in Crimea.

    Is this the very real possibility a major War is “Forthcoming”?

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