‘Russian Crimea’ is as much a myth as the world’s invincible second army

The debate about the role of Crimea in Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine continues to make headlines in the opinion sections of many news outlets. The Hill Times is no exception. As a Ukrainian born in Crimea and raised in a Russian-speaking environment, I couldn’t stand by as erroneous arguments take the centre stage. Pro-Russian majority? Crimea is often referred to as "pro-Russian" on the basis that the majority of the population is considered to be Russian-speaking. The same can be said about other Ukrainian regions: Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy. However, it is impossible to trace any separatist intentions there. The separatism in Ukraine exists only where the Russian army invades. And Crimea is no different from any other region of Ukraine. In a 1991 referendum, the residents of the peninsula voted for Ukrainian independence. In 1996, Crimea was granted the privileged status of an autonomous republic within Ukraine. In 2003, Crimeans condemned Russia's attempt to occupy the island of Tuzla in the Kerch Strait, which was Russia's first attempt to grab Ukrainian territory. The separatist agenda had no significant support in Crimea. In the 2012 local elections, the only pro-Russian party, "Russian Unity," managed to win only three seats out of 100 in the Crimean parliament. Anastasiya Ringis is a Ukrainian journalist who has been based in Ottawa since April 2022. Photograph courtesy of Anastasiya Ringis Despite this fact, on March 16, 2014, the Kremlin announced that more than 90 per cent of Crimeans voted to join Russia in a sham referendum that was not recognized by the international community. Similar referendums under the muzzles of Russian guns were held in September 2022 in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions of Ukraine—with inflated numbers, just like in Crimea in 2014. In reality, citizens of Kherson tried to stop Russian tanks during the invasion with their bare hands. And when Kherson was retaken by Ukraine, the people rushed on the streets and greeted its army as liberators. So the argument purporting that every Russian-speaking Ukrainian is a separatist who wants to be a part of the Russian nation has nothing to do with reality and is just another Kremlin propaganda cliché. The actual fact: ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars Russians justify their war against Ukraine by the fallacy of natural right: "it has always been Russian, so it must remain Russian." Despite the obvious unacceptance of such an argument for the 21st century, it ignores the fact that before the Russian Empire occupied the Crimea in 1783, it had already been an independent state, the Crimean Khanate. Crimea had its own authorities, army and ethnic nucleus: Crimean Tatars, or Qırımlılar. Under imperial rule, the Crimean Tatars experienced several ethnic cleansings, with the first taking place in 1783 when indigenous people were forcefully expelled from Crimea. Then in 1918, the Bolsheviks demolished the independent Crimean Democratic Republic. The third wave of extermination took place by Joseph Stalin's May 18, 1944, decree. Overnight, the Russians deported hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan with no right for repatriation. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, since 2014, Crimean Tatars have been under severe pressure from Vladimir Putin's Russia. Hundreds of Qırımlılar have been jailed on far-fetched and fabricated pretexts, mainly for expressing pro-Ukrainian views or advocating for human rights. Ukraine, on the other hand, has no track record of anything that could be defined as ethnic cleansing. There has not been the slightest attempt to oppress on national, linguistic, or religious grounds. Ukrainian Crimea is the only way to peace If the possession of Crimea is the realization of Putin’s imperial ambitions, for Ukrainians, the de-occupation of Crimea is a core security issue and the only option on the table. The Ukrainian people will not accept any compromises about Crimea for very obvious reasons. Russia will not stop its imperial land grabs and ethnic cleansings until defeated on the battlefield. Moscow broke all the international treaties and accords that recognized Ukraine’s borders as they were in 1991, and for this reason cannot be trusted anymore. Another reason is the demand to provide justice to the millions of Ukrainians who have suffered from the war crimes committed by the Russian forces since 2014. And finally, the only one true desire of any person in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory is to bring life back to normal, as it was before 2014. Crimeans are no exception; they are the Kremlin’s hostages who want to make their way back home. Anastasiya Ringis is a Ukrainian journalist who has been based in Ottawa since April 2022. The Hill Times