Pearls and Irritations

Russian claims to Crimea based on historical ownership, language or the illegitimacy of past decisions are weak. They provide no justification for its invasion and annexation or continued possession of Crimea.

Several myths about Ukraine and Russia’s invasion keep doing the rounds. One such zombie thesis is the idea that Crimea is historically and rightfully part of Russia, justifying Russia’s February 2014 invasion and annexation. Or at least that Ukraine should be ready to concede Russian sovereignty in some negotiating end-game.

The zombie reemerged in Gregory Clark’s recent P & I article. It needs to be reinterred. I have previously tried to do so, as did Ukrainian Crimean Tatar journalist Elmaz Asan, alas to no avail. So here goes again.

Claims from the past

Clark’s article recalls the words of Vladimir Putin at the time of annexation: “Crimea has always been and still is an inseparable part of Russia”. Except it wasn’t. This is like saying Australia always was and will be British. I doubt even Pauline Hanson would go that far today.

When Catherine II (the Great) annexed Crimea for the first time in 1783 (violating a treaty, by the way) there was hardly a Russian in sight. Its population was almost entirely percent Crimean Tatar, a people who had formed on the peninsula over the centuries, speaking a Kipchak Turkic language.

Such irredentist claims were supposedly consigned to the historical dustbin in the wake of the Sudetenland, Danzig, Alsace-Lorraine, Bosnia, Kuwait, Timor L’Este, etc. We are rightly appalled at Israel’s efforts to make occupation of the West Bank permanent through illegal settlements, and reject annexation of East Jerusalem.

But Russia apparently gets to play by different rules. As a colleague has suggested, by this logic, Moscow would presumably want to give Kaliningrad back to Germany: as Konigsberg, Emmanuel Kant’s home town, it belonged to one German state or another from 1255 to 1945. Other Russian candidates for the principle of going back one owner in history include:

• the Southern Kurile Islands and southern Sakhalin (to Japan)
• the ethnically Mongolian Republic of Tuva annexed by the USSR in 1944, under Chinese rule until 1911
• Russia’s Far Eastern Province, including Vladivostok, wrested from China in an unequal treaty in 1860.

And would Chechnya, Sakha, Tatarstan and 18 other nationality-based republics in the Russian Federation be given the option of independence?

Language

Mr Clark also sets great store by the fact that most people in Crimea speak Russian, which he confirmed in his visit there in the 1960s, and in 2015 under the auspices of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Who needs censuses when Aussies can visit once every 50 years! Donald Trump also buys into this line, telling G7 leaders in 2018 that ‘Crimea is Russian because everyone who lives there speaks Russian”. Other right-wing leaders like Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini have echoed Trump.

Of course, this is as relevant as saying most people in Ireland speak English as a first language (as 97 percent still do). Centuries of colonisation, co-optation and integration can do that. It was no secret that a majority of people throughout Ukraine until recently spoke Russian as a first language, especially but not only in eastern and central Ukraine. President Zelensky is a prime example.

You can read many accounts by Ukrainians with similar backgrounds of how they have switched to Ukrainian since the invasion. Here’s a typical story from one young man. At the same time, many of the Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines one hears interviewed on TV, along with residents of eastern Ukrainian cities like Kharkiv – currently being dismantled by missiles and bombs – still speak Russian.

Crimean Tatars and Crimea’s status

When Mr Clark visited in the 1960s he didn’t hear much Ukrainian spoken. He wouldn’t have heard any Crimean Tatar at all. That’s because the entire Crimean Tatar population was deported in cattle trucks to Central Asia in 1944, including Elmaz Asan’s grandmother. As many as 40 percent died soon after. They weren’t allowed to return to their homeland until 1989. And could only go back with difficulty after that.

Mr Clark describes as obscure the decision of the Soviet Communist Party Presidium under Khrushchev to transfer Crimea from the Russian republic to Ukraine in 1954. However, the evidence points to Khrushchev doing it partly for political reasons (getting some Ukrainians onside in power struggles) but equally for economic reasons: close aides recorded that after seeing the devastation of Crimea after the war and the deportation of the Crimean Tatars (backbone of agriculture) he wanted greater economic coordination between Ukraine and Crimea, which is a continuation of the southern Ukrainian steppelands.

However, prior to 1944, Crimea had been an autonomous republic within the Russian republic, with Crimean Tatars given leading roles in the Communist Party and government. Under Lenin’s “indigenisation” policy in the 1920s, the Crimean Tatars made important strides in boosting their language and culture, although Stalin had reversed many of those gains by 1939.

After Ukraine’s independence in 1991 there were renewed debates in Crimea over autonomy. A few pro-Moscow voices pushed to join Russia, egged on by ultranationalists in Moscow. However, after a few years of argy-bargy with local leaders, Kyiv struck a compromise that resolved Crimea’s special (and unique) status in the Ukrainian constitution as an autonomous region, with its own parliament.

Representatives of the Crimean Parliament, incidentally, did not back the 2014 Russian takeover. When the local, supposedly Russia-aligned politicians didn’t play ball, Russian special forces surrounded and occupied the parliament which duly elected President a former organised crime figure, nicknamed “The Goblin”, whose party had won only 4 percent of votes in the previous regional election. This story was revealed by none other than former intelligence operative Igor Girkin, who later moved to Donbas and was involved in the downing of flight MH17.

Public opinion and secession calls

The opinion of a temporary majority of Crimea’s population on independence from Kyiv is shaky grounds on which to argue for separatism. It’s been estimated that 90 percent of its Slavic (Russian and Ukrainian) population are, or are descended from, people who moved to Crimea
AFTER the 1944 deportation. So it would be a majority built on the blood and bones of a very recent genocide.

But even then, there had been no clear majority in favour of rejoining Russia. In Ukraine’s 1991 referendum on independence from the USSR, Crimeans voted in favour by a majority of 57 to 43 percent. Opinion polls in the years prior to 2014 showed little change for that level of support for joining Russia.

Moreover, there is no untrammelled right of secession for minority regions based on majority opinion under international law. That is not what self-determination means. The only exceptions, according to some experts, would be cases where there has been severe and prolonged repression of a local minority or region, or a history of bitter civil war – such as Eritrea, South Sudan or Kosovo.

There was nothing remotely like repression in Crimea – the opposite, in fact, given the degree of autonomy and widespread official use of Russian. Serious human rights abuses only came after the Russian takeover. Crimean Tatar and other activists have been imprisoned, some killed or disappeared. Human rights groups estimate there are more than 150 political prisoners in Crimea, many of them journalists.

Russian occupying authorities closed down the Crimean Tatars’ Mejlis (assembly) despite an International Court of Justice ruling. The Mejlis is the equivalent of an indigenous Voice, recognised by Presidential decree in 1999. Would Mr Clark have opposed the Voice referendum here on the grounds that Australia belongs historically to the British colonists and their descendants?

Treaties and promises

Regarding international law, the 2014 invasion was not just a gross violation of the prohibition on territorial aggression under the UN Charter. More blatantly, it broke promises made in treaties that Russia itself signed with Ukraine. Firstly, the 1997 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, in which Russia promised not to violate Ukraine’s borders and territorial integrity. Secondly, the 2004 Russia-Ukraine Treaty on State Borders (English translation on pp. 209-88) which delineated those borders in fine detail, and ratified by one V.V. Putin, President.

So there was no Russian claim on Crimea at all. As President Putin himself affirmed in 2008. And again just before he annexed it in 2014! No faffing around with such niceties as diplomatic conferences, like that milksop Hitler at Munich. Just send in the boys in green overnight.

Mr Clark also claims erroneously that Ukraine and Russia signed a peace agreement on 15 April 2014. No such agreement was signed. Perhaps he’s referring to the April 2022 talks in Istanbul, but nor was any agreement signed then. Nor was any prospective deal ditched at the behest of Boris Johnson, as he and others like Jeffrey Sachs claim.

The latter claim has become another zombie thesis. It has been completely debunked by Ukrainians and others close to the talks. The talks were never a serious exercise by the Kremlin. And any prospect of continuing them was torpedoed by the discovery of mass war crimes in towns near Kyiv after the Russian army withdrew.

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