The socio-economic issues behind the secessionist movements in Crimea, the future legal challenges and the war in Ukraine.
The Crimean Peninsula has been one of the most strategically valuable areas of the Black Sea for ages, along with the Dardanelles Strait. Its landform and shoreline make it a natural fortress from which one can easily control the sea ahead without necessarily having to land on the mainland.
Indeed, throughout its long and troubled history the region has been inhabited by numerous peoples: Cimmerians, Teucrians, Scythians, Greeks, Goths, Byzantines, Armenians, Genoese, Tatars, and Russians. None of them permanently linked their names to Crimea, but each left important archaeological and artistic evidence there.
Crimea has been legitimately part of Ukraine since 1954, when by a decree of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR it was ” conveyed ” from Soviet Russia to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, , the former which also ratified Nikita Khrushchev’s choice.
Despite the collapse of the USSR, the peninsula had remained under Kiev’s sovereignty, although not smoothly due to both Russian and internal Crimean independence pressures, which had attempted to become an autonomous republic between 1991 and 1992.
on February 27, 2014, Ukraine was invaded by Russia, however, and the peninsula was occupied by Russian armies stationed at the Sevastopol naval base.
As of early March, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, an oblast that is part of the Republic of Ukraine, changed its legal status to the Republic of Crimea, federated with the Russian Federation. The change was quickly submitted to the population in an advisory referendum that was hotly contested for several reasons.
First, the popular consultation, but also the Crimean “secession” itself, was carried out in violation of the Constitution of Ukraine and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea itself. These subjected any law of the regional assembly to ratification by the Kiev parliament, without which the laws of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea would be invalid and null and void.
Secondly, it was held under the close surveillance of the occupying Russian armed forces, which carried out countless arrests, kidnappings and summary killings of political opponents.
Finally, the referendum was held within only two weeks of the start of the Russian onslaught, numerous frauds were documented, and information networks not aligned with Kremlin propaganda were silenced, effectively undermining the democratic nature of the vote.
Following the referendum and accession to the Russian Federation, the Republic of Crimea’s international isolation began, which has devastating consequences on the peninsula’s economy.
In terms of the outcome, the 2014 popular consultation saw the overwhelming affirmation of the desire to join Russia. This is due to several factors, some of which go beyond pro-Russian propaganda, election fraud, and crimes perpetrated by the Moscow regime and its collaborators.
The phenomenon of so-called “ostalgia” has a central place in pro-Russian ideology. In Germany, this term refers to the almost ” romanticized” nostalgia for the communist and liberticidal German Democratic Republic, East Germany.
This phenomenon, emphasized by Kremlin propaganda, has had a particular effect on citizens born before the fall of the Berlin Wall, who fondly remember the Soviet era for all the reasons typical of pro-Soviet arguments: jobs for all, guaranteed salaries etc.
Moreover, Crimea was one of the most coveted vacation spots in the entire USSR and, thanks to tourism and Soviet military installations, one of the most economically flourishing.
This was accompanied by the phenomenon of forced Russification of anyone who did not already possess such citizenship, especially Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars. The term Russification refers to a set of legal and practical practices aimed at eliminating and replacing non-Russian cultures.
This phenomenon in Crimea has ancient origins. Already during the 1930s and 1940s the Crimean Tatars were victims of outright genocide at the hands of Stalin and Khrushchev, then head of the Ukrainian Communist Party, and their successors. Since March 2014, Putin and the leaders of the Crimean Republic have attempted to eliminate all traces of non-Russians.
First, the Mejlis, the representative body of the Tatars, was dismantled, then Russian passports were imposed, the display of any symbol referring to the Kiev government was prohibited, and most recently the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of March 20, 2021 No. 201.
This act gave most of the Crimean peninsula the status of Russia’s border territory.
As a result, foreign citizens and legal entities as well as the stateless no longer had the right to own property located in Crimea. De facto non-Russians were forced either to sell or surrender their homes and abandon their native lands or places otherwise dear to them.
the Kremlin propaganda often highlighted the large investments made by the Russian Federation in Crimea. The roads, railways, the Kerch Bridge, and other infrastructure works that propaganda says were done for the people, to restore the peninsula’s former glory, or to remedy the peninsula’s severe economic conditions.
In reality, these works were done in order to make Crimea a natural fortress and a springboard for the invasion of Ukraine.
In fact, on February 24, Russian troops that captured Cherson, stormed and razed Mariupol left the Crimean peninsula. The Black Sea Fleet ships that almost daily bombard Ukrainian territory are stationed in the port of Sevastopol.
In light of the war, one better understands the reasons for Putin’s decades-long policy by which he laid the foundation for strategic superiority from which to then launch the attack on Kiev.
It is only thanks to Western intervention after the events of 2014 that Ukraine has not been conquered by Russian troops, but rather can envision a return of Crimea and other occupied territories within its territory.
U.S.-made Himars jeopardize military infrastructure on the peninsula’s soil, and Ukrainian Neptune and Harpoon anti-ship missiles, which have already proved lethal to the Moskva cruiser and other Moscow ships, put the Sevastopol base at the forefront, so much so that Russia was forced to evacuate Kilo-class submarines from the port.
Despite this, Crimea still remains a fortress that is difficult to conquer in a short time and without losing many lives. It will be up to the government in Kiev to decide which path to take, that is, whether to try to get it at the negotiating table or on the ground.
In fact, a battle for Crimea would effect into a “civil war” between men and women who up to eight years earlier were fellow citizens, brothers and sisters, pushing away a possible reconciliation between the Crimeans and Ukrainians and thus a long-term stabilization of the region.
When Crimea is liberated, a number of issues will have to be addressed, such as the legal status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the citizens and minorities residing there, potentially representing an element of destabilization due to Kremlin propaganda.
Ukraine will be called upon to bring down the military regime that controls the peninsula with repression, a prime example being the detention center in Simferopolis run by the FSB, the Russian intelligence service, where atrocious torture is known to be perpetrated on the inmates.
In this regard, it would be desirable to have a new constitution-making process, perhaps by means of a representative assembly of Crimea’s multicultural soul, thus leading to a new constitutional charter that meets the various demands. Both autonomist ones and liberal-democratic ones.
Autonomy will have to be declined through the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, grounding the concessions themselves in the indivisibility of the territory of the Republic of Ukraine. Cessions of sovereignty, as was the case with the Sevastopol base, can no longer be deemed permissible.
Through this process, Crimea will be able to regain the most basic human rights and civil liberties that have been denied for too long by the Russian occupier. In particular, minority rights will become fundamental both as the basis of a truly democratic society and as an element of stabilization for the region. The Meijlis of the Tatars has been a good example and will have to be carried as a model in the future. Minorities should be guaranteed equal rights and opportunities of the majority and indeed, if necessary, special regulations should ensure their representation and enhance their identity. Fundamental for this to become a reality is not only the liberation of the occupied lands, but also and above all the defense of the transitional regime and the new constituted order from possible Russian and pro-Russian pitfalls.
For the Crimean highlands and valleys and the plains and hills of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions the “challenge of the century” passes dramatically.
As during the 1920s, it is up to the defenders of the “open society,” as theorized by Karl Popper, to decide whether to act and firmly defend the bastions of freedom that prevent autocracies from advancing and expanding further or to not intervene and let the eternal return take place. Tragically, it is on the skin of the Ukrainian people that the first clash between the so-called “free world” and autocracies is being decided.
The war and all the consequences it has brought here in the West are only a small price both compared to what the people of those regions experience in their daily lives and compared to the value of freedom.
The liberation of the lands invaded and occupied by Russia, the reconstruction of the social and democratic fabric of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, and the repair of the damage, even, environmental damage caused by eight years of low and high intensity war are necessary steps toward the ultimate inclusion of Ukraine in the free and democratic world.
A cura di Leonardo Fancello