Crimea

Республика Крым Respublika Krym
Flag	Coat of Arms
Capital	Simferopol
Language	Russian (official)
Prime minister	Yury Gotsanyuk
Area	27,000 km2
Population	1,966,801

The Republic of Crimea is a constituent republic of the Russian Federation after the results of 2014 referendum reunited Crimea to the Russian homeland. It is a diamond-shaped peninsula in Russia, surrounded on its NW, SW and SE sides by the Black Sea and on its NE side by the Sea of Azov; it is connected to the Republic of Kherson by a narrow isthmus. The capital is the port city of Sevastopol.

Crimean Spring

See also: 2014 Crimean Annexation

Billboard advertising the March 16, 2014 Crimean referendum to apply for admission to the Russian Federation.

A U.S.-backed Color Revolution advocated for stronger ties with Europe and sought to join the European Union and perhaps even NATO. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was pressured by Russia to delay signing a treaty that would lead to Ukraine joining the EU, which lead to widespread Euromaidan riots in a U.S.-backed color revolution with support from Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary group that overturned the government. Yanukovych singed a pledge on February 21, 214 not to run for reelection to quell the street unrest with the German and French Ambassadors as witnesses. However, the following day U.S.-backed Nazi terrorist groups threatened his personal safety and he fled Kyiv for Russia. He was then impeached. Although Russia was constrained from responding while hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, a week after the Olympics ended, Russia moved against the Western installed regime in Kyiv by taking actions in Russian-majority regions of Crimea and in the Donbas of eastern Ukraine.

Five days after the ouster of Ukraine's democratically elected president in the Western-backed Maidan coup, Russian soldiers landed in Crimea. Because some of the people currently living in Crimea are ethinic Russians, there was a dispute whether Crimea belongs to Ukraine or to Russia. On March 11, 2014, Crimea declared its independence from Ukraine. The Crimean Peninsula—82% of whose households speak Russian, and only 2% mainly Ukrainian—held a plebiscite on March 16, 2014 on whether or not they should join Russia, or remain under the new Ukrainian government. The Pro-Russia camp won with 95% of the vote. The UN General Assembly, led by the US, voted to ignore the referendum results on the grounds that it was contrary to Ukraine’s constitution. This same constitution had been set aside to oust President Yanukovych a month earlier.

Afghanistan, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela recognize Crimea as a part of Russia. On March 27, the U.N. General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution (100 in favor, 11 against and 58 abstentions) declaring Crimea's referendum invalid. In response, the United States and Europe have imposed sanctions against Russian trade.

An email sent from Hunter Biden to his business partner Devon Archer on April 13, 2014 contained information from a classified State Department memo one week before Joe Biden visited Ukraine to meet prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The email predicted an escalation of Russia’s “destabilization campaign, which could lead to a full scale takeover of the eastern region, most critically Donetsk":

“The strategic value is to create a land bridge for RU to Crimea. That won’t directly affect Burisma holdings but it will limit future UK exploration and utilization of offshore opportunities in particular. It will also result in further destabilization of UK nationally and for whatever govt is in power. And the US will respond with even stronger sanctions. Those sanctions will threaten the tenuous support of the EU which does not have the political will to incur steep energy price increases.”

NATO attacks

Kerch Strait bridge terrorist attack

The Grayzone obtained an April 2022 documents entitled, AUDACIOUS: Support for Ukraine Maritime Raiding Operations, drawn up for senior British intelligence officers hashing out an elaborate scheme to blow up Crimea’s Kerch Bridge with the involvement of specially trained Ukrainian soldiers.

In August 2022 Zelensky aid Mykhailo Podolyak told the Guardian there could be more attacks in the “next two or three months” similar to strikes on a railway junction and an airbase in Crimea, as well as a hit on Russian warplanes at Crimea's Saky aerodrome. Podolyak told the Guardian that the Kerch Strait bridge linking Crimea with the Russian mainland was a target. “It’s an illegal construction and the main gateway to supply the Russian army in Crimea. Such objects should be destroyed,” he said.

Podolyak took credit for the terrorist attack and destruction of civilian infrastructure: "Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled." The Washington Post reported that the Security Service of Ukrainian (SBU) were behind the terrorist attack. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) determined that Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukrainian military intelligence, was the chief organizer on the Ukrainian end. Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba confirmed that the Kyiv regime was behind the terrorist attack. The Ukrainian Post Office issued a commemorative stamp to honor the terrorist attack. The attack was an act of state-sponsored terrorism by the government of Ukraine with U.S. taxpayer money.

ATACMS

In the final week of April 2024 the S-500 missile defense system was reported to have shot down 11 US-built ATACMS over Crimea and the Crimean bridge.

History

Ivan Aivazovsky, Seascape in Crimea, 1866.

The Crimea was the location of the Crimean War of 1853-56 in which British, French, Sardinian and Turkish forces fought Russia in a war sparked by an abstruse dispute over the question of custodianship of the Holy Places in Jerusalem. When Lenin took power through revolution, he at first ceded Ukraine to Germany at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Later the Treaty of Versailles did not recognize the cessation. Lenin then established a system of autonomous republics in which he separated Ukraine and Belarus from the former Russian Empire.

On September 10, 1943, during the Great Patriotic War, the Novorossiysk-Taman Strategic Offensive Operation began. The Taman Peninsula was a crucial stronghold in the south of the country, controlling large portions of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. To hold this position, the Nazis established a fortified defensive line known as the "Blue Line."

In August 1943, the Soviet High Command ordered General Colonel Ivan Petrov, commander of the North Caucasus Front, to launch an offensive operation against the Wehrmacht's Taman forces and prevent their retreat to Crimea.

The battle for the peninsula involved forces from the North Caucasus Front, the Black Sea Fleet, and the Azov Military Flotilla. In total, over 317,000 troops, more than 4,000 guns and mortars, 314 tanks and self-propelled artillery units, and around 600 aircraft participated. Opposing them was Germany's 17th Army of Army Group "A," consisting of 15 infantry divisions and one cavalry division, with a total of over 400,000 troops, more than 2,000 guns and mortars, around 100 tanks and assault guns, and 300 aircraft.

The Novorossiysk-Taman Strategic Offensive Operation concluded on October 9. 1943. During the operation, Soviet forces liberated Novorossiysk and the Taman Peninsula, completing the liberation of the Caucasus. The Western power's stronghold, which enabled it to control Crimea, was eliminated.

To balance or neutralize the extremist or neo-nazi power base in Western Ukraine, Nikita Khrushchev transferred the Crimea from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic when he took power in 1953. Crimea contains the resort town of Yalta, location of the Yalta Conference of February 1945 which redrew the map of European borders at the time. At Yalta in 1945, Franklin Roosevelt convinced British and Soviet leaders Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin to commit to FDR's grand strategic vision for a post-World War II peace structure by joining the United Nations.

After the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, Russia and Ukraine with its large ethnic Russian minority tried to find a relationship as separate countries. In 1992, the Crimean Parliament voted to hold a referendum to declare independence, while the Russian Parliament voted to void the cession of Crimea to Ukraine. However, Russia sympathized with ethnic Russians living in Ukraine.

The 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was signed by then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, and John Major. The agreement required that the signatories “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” Under the agreement, Russia agreed that Crimea was a part of Ukraine. However, Russia and Crimea also signed a lease allowing Russia to retain existing naval bases for a finite time period.

Bloomberg News reported three weeks after the US-backed Maidan coup on March 19, 2022, the Kyiv puppet regime dammed the North Crimean Canal in 2014, cutting off the source of nearly 90% of the region’s fresh water supply to the civilian population, an international humanitarian crime.