The Crimea elections, Russia and the West
The people of the Crimea Peninsular voted on March 16, 2014 to break away from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
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Two options were available to the voters at the referendum – to vote “yes” to become a region of the Russian Federation or to ask for more autonomy under Ukraine.
According to the Election Commission, 97 per cent of the voters opted to become Russians.
The Crimea Peninsular has been part of the Republic of Ukraine since 1954.
Fifty-eight per cent of the population are ethnic Russians and the rest are Ukrainians and Tatars.
President Nikita Khrushchev of the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) reportedly offered the Peninsular to Ukraine as a gift in 1954. Since then and until the controversial referendum of March 16, the people of the Crimea regarded themselves as Ukrainians.
Following the collapse of the USSR in 1990, Ukraine, then a member state of the Soviet Union, broke away and declared itself independent in 1991.
The government of Ukraine administered the Crimea Peninsular as a semi-autonomous region until the referendum this March.
Non-Russian speaking Ukrainians, such as the Ukrainian-speaking and the Tatars of the Crimea, boycotted the referendum. Both sides claimed they boycotted the referendum because it was illegal and under the control of Russian soldiers.
“The faith of our motherland cannot be decided in such a referendum under shadows of the guns of soldiers,”Refat Chubarov, leader of the Tatars’ unofficial Parliament, has said.
The international community received results of the referendum with mixed feelings.
On the side of the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin had said earlier that he would respect the decision of the Crimea people.
On March 21, he signed into law the treaty that makes the Crimea part of the Russian Federation.
But many countries, especially those of the Western Hemisphere, condemned the referendum and the annexation of Crimea by Russia.
The United States described the referendum as illegal and that it must be rejected.
The European Union (EU) expressed similar sentiments.
The case of the US and the EU is that the Crimea had been an important part of the map of Europe and that the annexation by Russia has thrown the European map into disarray.
The current map was drawn up after the Cold War and the dissolution of the USSR.
Recent moves by Russia in Europe, including annexation of the Crimea, have reversed that order.
The West entertains the fear that Russia could attack other East European countries, such as Georgia and Moldova, and annex them.
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Because of reasons stated above, the US and the EU have decided to impose international sanctions on Russia.
The EU has frozen the assets of 33 top Russian officials and placed travel ban on them.
A summit with Russia scheduled for June, this year, has been cancelled. All EU member states have decided to cancel all regular bilateral summits with Russia.
For its part, the US has blacklisted 40 top Russian officials and businessmen as well as the Rossiya Bank, a top Russian financial institution.
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Russian individuals on the blacklist of the EU include the Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Rogozhin; two aids of President Putin; two members of the Crimea administration who are among 12 high-ranking officials affected.
They have been banned from entering Europe and their foreign accounts will be frozen.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Konstentine Dolgov, has described the sanctions on Russian citizens as groundless, counterproductive and “absolutely awful.”
He said the sanctions would create artificial barriers between Russia and the West.
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“Sanctions and any restrictive measures are viewed by us as awful, illegal and illegitimate,” the Russian Foreign Minister added.
According to the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia whose name is on the blacklist: “All these sanctions aren’t worth a grain of sand of the Crimea land that returned to Russia.”
The American and European sanctions are, at the time of writing, having crippling and severe effect on Russia’s fragile economy.
The Russian stock market dropped by three per cent and two credit-rating agents have downgraded Russia’s economy from stable to negative or zero.
It is believed that further sanctions will cripple the Russian economy.
However, a full-scale European economic sanctions against Russia is not likely because the EU economies have just emerged from the Great Global Economic Recession.
Some EU countries, especially Germany, with strong economic ties with Russia, will not risk putting its recent economic gains on the line.
As part of initial measures to protect and assist Ukraine, the EU has signed an Association Agreement with that country.
Signed on March 21, the agreement essentially embodies the deal with EU that the former President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukoych, had abandoned and offered, instead, to pursue closer ties with Russia.
The EU has already promised to bail out Ukraine with $15 billion economic aid. The EU is expected to sign similar agreements with Georgia and Moldova.
“This treaty shows that Ukraine shares European values,” Mr Arseniy Yatsenyuk, acting Prime Minister of Ukraine, has said after signing the agreement.
“This is a historic day. We want to be part of the big European family and this is the first tremendous step in order to achieve for Ukraine its legitimate goal as a full-fledged member,” he added.
The President of the EU, Mr Herman Van Rompuy, has said: “The agreement recognises the aspiration of the people of Ukraine to live in a country governed by values, by democracy and rule of law.”
On Russia’s decision to admit the Crimea Peninsular into the Russian Federation, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, has said that he had informed President Putin that the Ukrainian crisis could only be solved through peaceful negotiations based on the UN Charter and respect for the sovereignty of Ukraine.
Mr Ban Ki-Moon added that he had asked both sides of the conflict to avoid “inflammatory rhetoric” and to control “radical elements.”
Clearly, the UN Secretary General’s position is an indication that the Ukrainian-Crimean crisis is not over with the Crimea referendum and Russia’s incorporation of the Crimea Peninsula into the Russian Federation.
therson.cofie@yahoo.com