In late February 2014, armed soldiers in uniforms without insignia began to occupy
Crimea. Despite their Russian equipment, Russia denied involvement. Just two months
after their appearance, Putin declared Crimea was now part of Russia. It marked
the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War. So what led to Putin’s invasion of Crimea
in 2014? And why does Crimea continue to be a crucial sticking point in negotiations in 2023?
To understand this in more detail, let’s first take a look at the complicated history of
Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula. Like most of Europe, Ukraine had
a shifting history territorially, and for centuries it has had a complex and
antagonistic relationship with Russia. Incorporated into the Russian Empire
in the late 18th Century, Ukraine briefly gained its independence in 1918, but three
years later became part of the Soviet Republic. Stalin’s regime ruled the region aggressively,
enacting a number of russification tactics. The Holodomor was Stalin’s state-sponsored
famine of 1932-33 – a genocide in Ukraine. It was a direct assault on Ukraine’s peasantry,
and nearly four million people died. In 1944, as part of Stalin’s systematic repression
of ethnic minorities, thousands of Crimean Tatars were deported en masse and exiled from Crimea.
Khrushchev took power of the Soviet Union in 1953, and he
had less of Stalin’s anti-Ukrainian anxieties. In 1954, the Crimean Peninsula was ceremoniously
transferred from the Russian S.F.S.R to Ukraine. On 1 December 1991, a referendum on Independence
was held in Ukraine. The population voted overwhelmingly for independence.
Why did Putin invade Crimea in 2014? Geographically, the Crimean Peninsula
in the Black Sea holds a location of great strategic importance.
Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, Russia has held military bases on the
peninsula, including the port of Sevastopol. Crimea has enormous strategic value to Russia,
and I think probably the most important is obviously access to Russia's naval
base at Sevastopol, which is obviously the home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.
And since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it introduced quite a lot of air defense systems,
long range cruise missiles, all of which can strike targets from very well-protected parts
of Russia along the coast. And it gives Russia access to different sea routes in the South
Atlantic and the Indian Oceans and as well as be a bit of a foothold for some of Russia's
support for the Syrian regime as of 2015. Furthermore, Crimea is home to key energy
supplies, including huge amounts of offshore oil and gas resources in the Black Sea.
For years, Ukraine’s government under President Viktor Yanukovych tried to
decrease the amount of energy that they were importing from Russia, particularly
gas. Annexing Crimea allowed Russia to gain control of some of those vital energy assets.
Alongside its geographical value, Putin undoubtedly saw the annexation
of Crimea as a politically strategic move. At the time, in 2014 when Russia decided to annex
Crimea, there was a need to retain some influence over Ukraine because the pro-Russia president,
Viktor Yanukovych, who was removed in a coup. Taking control of Crimea was
really an attempt by Russia to make any Western integration with Ukraine much less attractive.
Ukraine’s shifting history has caused lasting fault lines through the country. Ukraine is often
depicted as divided between Russian-speaking, ethnically Russian regions and Ukrainian-speaking,
ethnically Ukrainian regions. But this view is in many ways far too simplistic.
That view is really tied to the geography of the land, which is the idea that the eastern
part of Ukraine is geographically closer to Russia and therefore had deeper linguistic
and cultural ties that bear out politically. And in some senses, before Russia's annexation of
Crimea in 2014, that was somewhat true. So there were very strong pro-Russian parties, such as the
Party of Regions, that tended to do very well in eastern Ukraine. But the reality is that there
were always significant communities of Russian, ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in both the
East and the west of Ukraine. And there is also a really important distinction to be made between
ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. But Russian is a language is and was widely spoken in Ukraine.
Since 2012, Ukraine’s government had been negotiating a deal for greater integration with
the EU. But Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, in a last minute delay,
failed to sign the agreement in 2013. Under pressure from Putin, Yanukovych had instead
opted for a closer relationship with Russia. The decision was met with outrage. In November
2013, mass protests erupted across the country which became known as Euromaidan.
As well as the rejection of the deal, there was widespread anger at government corruption.
The protesters clashed with the riot police – the Berkut – and their heavy-handedness fuelled
public anger. What began as protests escalated over the winter months into a revolution.
Photojournalist Anastasia Taylor-Lind arrived in Kyiv in January 2014. She was originally
passing through the city to collect a press pass but found herself in centre of the protests in
Independence Square. I chose to
portray people in the visuals against a black backdrop in order to remove this very chaotic,
very visually dramatic backdrop of fire, ice and smoke. So that the viewer, but also myself,
was able to see each person one at a time as an individual. So the portrait studio
was set up on the quieter days, but on the days where violence really intensified,
and particularly on the 20th February 2014, that became known as Bloody Thursday.
You can see a picture of from that day behind me, the frontline barricade had
moved quite dramatically and as in this picture, it sat right across the centre of independence
Square. What I didn't know in the moment that I made this picture was that behind this wall
of smoke, snipers were atop several rooftops. And once the protesters broke through this barricade
and ran up the hill on Institutes Street, they would open fire on them and start killing
protesters with single shots to the full head or to the chest with high velocity sniper rifles.
On 21 February 2014, Yanukovych fled Ukraine via Crimea to Russia. The following day, the Ukrainian
parliament voted to remove him from his post. Just a few weeks later on 27 Feb, groups of
armed masked soldiers without insignias but with Russian weapons and equipment appeared
in the streets in Crimea. They became known as the ‘little green men’. The soldiers
surrounded the airports in Simferopol and Sevastopol, and most military bases in Crimea,
and later seized key government building. A referendum was held within Crimea on 16 March.
The results apparently indicated that 95.5% of voters were in favour of joining Russia.
But the vote was condemned by the EU as ‘illegal and illegitimate’, asserting
that its outcome would not be recognised. A few days later, Putin signed a treaty
incorporating Crimea into the Russian Federation. Ukraine evacuated some 25k
military personnel and their families from Crimea.
The US and the EU were quick to condemn in the invasion. Sanctions were put in
place including asset freezes and travel bans on Russian officials.
The G8 summit that was to be held in Russia that year was cancelled, and Russia’s membership with
the group was suspended. The restrictions made
little change to Putin’s agenda. Putin had embarked on the Russo-Ukrainian war,
isolating Russia politically from the West. But what was Putin’s long-term objective in 2014?
So in 2014 and 2015, I don't really believe that there were plans on the table in Russia
to take over the entire of Ukraine, unlike the situation that we see today in 2023.
So at the time there were a lot of important political reasons why Russia was interested in
keeping Ukraine close to Russia politically. Russia has always seen Ukraine and Belarus,
as well as part of not only Russia's sphere of influence, but as an extension really,
of Russia's own security space. So Russia, of course, had a vested
interest in making sure that Ukraine did not drift more closely towards structures
like NATO's or the European Union, which of course, Russia sees the European Union very
much as a security structure. And even though it would argue that the bloc is otherwise.
In March 2014, pro-Russian separatist groups arose in the Donbas region, and began to storm
govt buildings, leading to armed conflict with Ukrainian government forces. Once again
there was a presence of men in uniforms without insignia armed with Russian equipment. Soon after,
Russian troops were reported to be amassing across the Ukrainian border.
Over the next few months, fighting between the separatist groups and the Ukrainian military
intensified. Pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk proclaimed their independence.
But Russia continued to deny all involvement. But the problem was that Putin denied this
for years, even in the face of growing evidence to the contrary.
And I think that was part and parcel of Russia's way of trying to continue to exert its influence
over Ukraine, where this would just be a continued thorn in Ukraine's side. This was
a conflict that Russia could dial up and down as necessary to extract political concessions
from Kiev. And there was also a need, obviously, to not claim responsibility internationally for
what was going on in the east of Ukraine. By November 2014, the fighting had become
static along the front line, leading the war to be known as a ‘frozen conflict’ and yet
the war zone remained a deadly place with more deaths of soldiers and civilians every month.
Towns in the Donbas region were cut in half by this fairly arbitrary front line.
Whole communities were disconnected from public services, hospitals, schools, universities and
also families fell with homes on either side of the frontline, including Alisa Sopova’s.
This project, which we called 5km from the Frontline, saw us following the same communities
and the same families over the last five years. Towards the end of 2014, a number of European
countries including France and Germany stepped in to aid peace negotiations. The talks were
held in Minsk, Belarus. In 2015, Belarus despite its close ties to Russia, was trying
to position itself as a neutral third party. In early 2015, the second attempt at an agreement,
Minsk II, was established between Russia, Ukraine, and the leaders of the separatist groups.
In the months that followed, no more than minor skirmishes took place along the line of contact.
But once again, the tentative truce didn’t last. Over the next 7 years the war in Donbas
continued to rage, resulting in around 14,000 deaths since 2014.
Yet between 2015 and 2022, the war in Ukraine disappeared from the headlines in the West.
In 2019, ex-TV star Volodymyr Zelenskiy was elected with a large majority.
Zelenskiy immediately asserted that he would secure peace in the east. But
a few years later, everything changed. In the early hours of 22 February 2022,
Russian tanks rolled across the Ukraine border. For the past year, Zelenskiy has taken a strong
stance within negotiations with Russia. Throughout the talks, Crimea has been a key stumbling block.
So Zelensky in 2021, started to set up something called the Crimean platform. So this was an
initiative which was specifically designed to retake Crimea from Russia. Obviously In Russia,
this was seen as a potential security threat. And so the rhetoric from Russia also started
to increase against Ukraine, and that all contributed to the ratcheting up of
tensions between both sides throughout 2021. And Zelensky stance on Crimea has become
that there is now no deal on the table until Crimea territory is returned to Ukraine. Now,
this is obviously a major sticking point in negotiations because Russia has explicitly
also said that Crimea cannot be part of the negotiations and that it considers it to be
Russian territory, even though this is, of course, internationally recognized as Russian territory.
So it seems that Crimea is likely to be a continued stumbling block in any kind
of resolution to the current war, Russia's war against Ukraine. And as Zelenskiy has put it,
this began with Crimea, and it's likely to end Crimea.