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Crimea: Six years after illegal annexation
Steven Pifer Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Editor's Note:

Six years after Russia illegally annexed Crimea, Ukraine lacks the leverage to restore sovereignty over the region, but the West should not accept it since doing so would only encourage Russia to believe it can get away with annexing territory from other countries, argues Steven Pifer. This post originally appeared on the Stanford CISAC's website.

March 18 marks the sixth anniversary of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Attention now focuses on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Donbas, a conflict that has taken some 14,000 lives, but Moscow’s seizure of Crimea — the biggest land-grab in Europe since World War II — has arguably done as much or more damage to Europe’s post-Cold War security order.

Crimea’s Illegal Annexation

Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution ended in late February 2014, when President Victor Yanukovych fled Kyiv — later to turn up in Russia — and the Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) appointed an acting president and acting prime minister to take charge. They made clear their intention to draw Ukraine closer to Europe by signing an association agreement with the European Union.

Almost immediately thereafter, armed men began occupying key facilities and checkpoints on the Crimean peninsula. Clearly professional soldiers by the way they handled themselves and their weapons, they wore Russian combat fatigues but with no identifying insignia. Ukrainians called them “little green men.” President Vladimir Putin at first flatly denied these were Russian soldiers, only to later admit that they were and award commendations to their commanders.


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