Reading time: educational 59 minutes (or 60 minutes with footnotes)
Welcome to the peace initiative for Ukraine in which you can contibute by raising your awareness as well as your consciousness[+] and spirit to the modes[+] of neutrality[*], decency, respectfulness, wisdom[*], objectivity, mastery of the intellect, surrender (ego and mind to God’s will), and finally peace (inner then outer). To properly grasp everything, we recommend reading the articles of this peace initiative in the order that we[*] designed it, which is listed in the CONTENTS. So if you haven’t read the previous articles, we urge you to do it, please. With this article we continue the “Meeting the Demands for Ending the War” segment, carrying on providing answers to Why should Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia?
On 19 February 1954, the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union governed by the Soviet President Khrushchev (former President of SSR Ukraine) transferred[ꚛ] Crimea from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. The decree's rationale was explained by the "shared economy, territorial proximity, and close economic and cultural ties between the Crimean region and the Ukrainian SSR." However, there might be actually no legal basis for Ukraine to claim Crimea because of these four reasons:
1) Issue Of the Constitutionality and Legitimacy Of The 1954 Transfer of Crimea to Ukraine
Question of constitutionality[+] of that transfer is legitimate because the Constitution of the Soviet Union didn't empower the Presidium to consider changes in the constitutional legal status of Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, including Crimea. The decree violated Articles 14 and 18 of the then-valid constitution of the Soviet Union which required a formal agreement between Soviet Socialist Republics for any change of their borders. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR (and not the Presidium) could only confirm such an agreement but not by itself pass a federal law and a constitutional amendment to that effect.
In the case of Crimea, no such parliamentary procedure was initiated and duly carried out in the two parliaments, no relevant parliamentary sessions were held, no debates took place, no votes were taken and no agreement was adopted and signed. At the session on 19 February 1954, when by the order of the Soviet General Secretary Khrushchev (took over from Stalin, was former President of SSR Ukraine), the Presidium issued a decree[ꚛ] transferring Crimea from Russia to Ukraine, there was no quorum and more than half of the members of the Presidium were not present[+].
A decree transferring Crimea from Russia to Ukraine issued by the Presidium
Although republic parliaments had given their consent, the Constitution didn't empower the Presidium to make such territorial changes, which makes the transfer unconstitutional. Moreover, the Crimean population was deprived of its right to give or deny its consent for any major status change, the Crimean people were denied their right to self-determination[+]. In the 2014 referendum, they were given the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status and so they voted to rejoin Russia. All things considered, even in Soviet terms, the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was illegal, unconstitutional, and illegitimate. With the 2014 referendum, a historic injustice in Crimea has been corrected and the Crimean people were allowed to express their right to self-determination in wanting to rejoin Russia.
On 11 March 2024, Russian lawmakers submitted[+] a bill to the State Duma that seeks to invalidate the government decision from 1954 to transfer Crimea from Russia to Ukraine because it was in violation[+] of the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It regards the decision to transfer the Crimean region without taking into account the will of the Russian people as a political crime.
2) Crimeans Voted in the 2014 Crimean Status Referendum To Secede from Ukraine
Like any native people and residents of any Autonomous Republic[+], as enshrined in the UN Charter[+], Crimea people had the right to self-determination, just like Ukrainians had exercised their right to it in 1991, as well as many other former Soviet and Yugoslav republics, including Kosovo just recently. What is democracy if not allowing people to democratically vote in a referendum? But those who feign to protect democratic values, do not give that human right to Crimea people. Double standards are illegal; voting in a referendum is not!
A referendum [+] was held on 16 March 2014 when Crimeans overwhelmingly voted to rejoin Russia – 97% voted for it (with 83% voter turnout).
On grounds of Ukrainian discrimination and threats against the Russian ethnic minority, at the time when Ukrainians themselves ditched their government and Constitution, all regional legislatures, including Crimean, became the only legal authorities – this made it legal to hold a referendum without the government's approval and to secede. This is one of the main reasons why there is no legal basis for Ukraine to claim Crimea any longer.
"National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. 'Self-determination' is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action." – United States President Woodrow Wilson
⚠️ According to the UN Charter, Article 1 in both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)[+] and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)[+] reads: "All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right, they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development."
Over the years, Ukraine had denied Crimeans those rights, which is why, under international law, they had the legal right to secede as a remedy on grounds of them having suffered injustices, oppression, and subjugation when the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution[+] created an ‘extreme situation’ in which the Crimean Russian ethnicity’s right to self-determination could not be exercised in the constitutional framework of Ukraine. Remedial secession is legal as the territorial integrity of a state can be discarded when there are serious and persistent breaches of the human rights of its citizens. States not respecting the right to internal self-determination of their population forfeit the protection of their territorial integrity to facilitate people’s external self-determination then.
The Crimeans addressed denials of human rights before addressing the denial of and right to self-determination, which then become the main argument in the context of Ukrainians claiming their right toterritorial integrity and the UN's resolution[+][+][+] (on the Crimean referendum) declaring that the principle of territorial integrity should have precedence over self-determination, which contradicted the UN's resolution on validating Kosovo’s declaration of independence[+] in 2008 (on grounds of a humanitarian crisis, repeated oppression of the minority, serious and persistent breaches of the human rights of the residents, which was also the case with the Russian ethnic minorities in Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine), as well as Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1991.
The tyranny of the majority[+] was particularly poignant as there was a large Russian minority group whose interests after the 2014 Ukrainian revolution[+] were no longer being represented, and who then sought to secede on grounds of discrimination and injustices by Ukrainian ultra-nationalists.
As long as the policymakers do not come to a better understanding of how to respond to the claims for self-determination, then secession remains the only solution for those folks that are victims of discrimination, inequality, injustice, exploitation, abuse, maltreatment, oppression, repression, suppression, subjugation, harassment, silencing, banning, and other violations of human rights.
In democratic societies, majority rule is used to determine the outcome of electoral and voting processes. The right to self-determination by a minority has long been contested in democracies with majority rule. In the case of Crimea, self-determination was in accord with the principle of regional majority rule and equal rights but at odds with territorial integrity.
Self-determination is often contrasted with territorial integrity[+], which is why we need to blur the line between those two to remove that division and conflict. Here is how to do it: by obliging all states to protect the rights of minorities to self-determination with explicit rules and regulations as well as penalties whenever these are violated, which ought to be enshrined in their constitutions. If the right to self-determination of an ethnic minority is regarded rather than disregarded, then territorial integrity will naturally be preserved. However, if an ethnic minority is not given the right to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development, then they should have the right to external self-determination – the right to secede, as it already came to pass in some cases when the territories of ethnic minorities in other countries have been granted the right to declare independence (such as in case of former republics and a province of former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union).
In the case of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea[+], under Kyiv's rule, the Crimeans were deprived of those rights, such as the right to freely pursue economic development, which resulted in Crimea becoming extremely poor. The evidence that Crimea was economically repressed under Ukrainian rule is in the before and after statistics and pictures[»]. Before secession and annexation in 2014, Crimea had a GDP of $4,3 billion ($1.790 per capita). The average salary was pitiful $290 per month. The budget deficit was enormous at $1,5 billion. Just two years after its secession and reunification with Russia in 2016, Crimea had a GDP of $7 billion ($3.000 per capita) and the salaries doubled. It would be even much better if Ukrainians haven't sabotaged Crimea's development by cutting the access to water, which extremely damaged agriculture (the main branch of the Crimean economy) and tourism, to name just a few Ukrainian-caused disadvantages. Anyone is free to draw their own conclusions if this act of Ukrainian retaliation on the Crimean population is decent and whether it shows how much Ukraine cares about what happens to Crimeans. All civilized states should be virtues-driven rather than flaws-driven. Vengeance is a flaw, not a virtue.
When considering the special rights of autonomous regions, let's not forget that not only Crimea but also Crimea's largest city Sevastopol (with a total population is 547.820) was administratively one of only two Ukrainian cities with special status (the other being Kyiv), due to the city being the historical headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. With a type of first-level administration, like Kyiv, Sevastopol should have had more political liberties and rights than all other Ukrainian towns.
For that additional reason, with not one but two autonomies, Crimea should have had the right to hold a referendum without the illegitimate government's approval, along with the right to self-governing and self-determination, especially under the extreme conditions of oppression, subjugation, and discrimination when Crimeans were left with no other option to exercise “internal self-determination” in a meaningful way but to resort to “remedial secession”, which is allowed by international law.
However, unlike with Kosovo, in the case of Crimea, UN members decided that the principle of territorial integrity should have precedence over the human right to self-determination without giving any legitimate justifications and despite the Kosovo independence precedent[+] in international law that should apply to all other separatist movements involving similar legal issues, including Crimean (Serbia invaded Kosovo that had a status as a UN protectorate but if Serbian violations of the human rights of the Kosovo Albanians were classified as a humanitarian crisis, the same could be done for the Ukrainian violations of the human rights of the Russian ethnic minorities in Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine). 2008 Kosovo's declaration of independence[+][+] was violating the Constitution of Serbia, nevertheless, the UN issued a resolution validating it whereupon many UN member states recognized Kosovo's sovereignty. There have been several notable cases[+] of self-determination, which should be considered for comparison and arbitration.
We all have to act on our conscience and ask ourselves whether we want to support unlawful double standards. The double standards of NATO-puppet UN on the issue of Crimea's secession from Ukraine is exposed by many statesmen, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov[»]: “When the US recognized the independence of Kosovo, they said it is self-determination. When Crimeans held a referendum, they said it violates territorial integrity. UN Charter is not a menu. You have to respect it in its entirety.”
Kosovo vs Crimea Independence
As incredible as it sounds, there are people in NATO states who distinguish Kosovo and Crimea independence by a level of humanitarian crisis, claiming that as justification for Kosovo independence and denying Crimeans the same right based on Western classification of humanitarian crisis. This is like allowing women to divorce their repressive husbands only if they could prove enough wounds – utterly deplorable! If a majority of any folk claims to be repressed and votes to separate, then we all should take their word for it. If divorce is allowed by families, why not by states?
If the lawmakers wrote laws that are ambiguous and make contradictory rulings (double-dealing), is it not then their fault if separatists interpret the law to their advantage? Rather than condemning a declaration of independence as "illegal" and those declaring it and those taking advantage of it as "lawbreakers", international lawmakers should make unequivocal laws. If there is a fault in anyone, it is then in the lawmakers who make laws that are ambiguous and unjust. Who are they anyway (what are their names) and who gives them the right to determine the fate of all minorities in the world that wish to exercise their right to self-determination?!
The argument that Kosovo and Crimean cases can't be compared because of the alleged lack of a humanitarian crisis in Crimea (which can be argued and then Crimea could be compared to Slovenia whose independence was recognized in 1991) is proven to be fallacious by the fact that if true, by the same token, it should have then also applied to the Donbas1 region, which should be then also allowed to separate because no one can argue that there was a huge humanitarian crisis[+] there for over eight years (2014-2022) with the murders of thousands of civilians, the extensive and systematic oppression of the Russian ethnic minority, and violation of human rights mainly executed by neo-Nazi Azov Battalion[+] that is part of the National Guard of Ukraine. Clearly, the alleged lack of a humanitarian crisis in Crimea is only an excuse to deny Crimeans the right to self-determination via democratic referendum because NATO wanted to get a hold of a strategically highly valuable peninsula via admitting Ukraine to NATO.
NATO's argument for the legitimacy[+] of their own bombing of Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999(without prior UN Security Council authorization and it was not in self-defense, thus it was illegal) was that “the conditions in Kosovo were posing a risk to regional stability” but the same applied in Donbas and many other regions in the world where NATO didn't intervene, so why should Kosovo be an exception2? The same argument should then also apply in Crimea and Donbas with Russia having the same right to justify their bombings of Ukraine arguing like NATO that “the conditions in Crimea and Donbas were posing a risk to regional stability”but for some hypocritical reason, the West assumes that double standards should apply.
The US claimed that as many as 225.000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59 might have been murdered, and both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust, but like in the case of the invasion of Iraq where no weapons of mass destruction were found, the FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. Just like the Iraqi WMD, the Kosovo "holocaust" was a lie. The NATO attack had been fraudulent.
NATO intervened[+]for 2,5 months in aid of Kosovo and the UN recognized Kosovo's sovereignty for the reason that Serbia committed crimes against humanity or terrible atrocities against the Kosovar Albanians (495 civilians killed and 820 civilians wounded), but Ukraine also committed crimes against humanity and terrible atrocities against the Russian ethnic minority in Donbas – almost 14.000[+][+][+] Donbas Russian ethnic civilians and rebels were killed from 2014-2022[+], many more encountered a risk to life under Ukrainian shelling and bombardments and were prosecuted, the rebels were declared ‘terrorists’ so Kyiv sent troops and imposed economic blockade; in March 2014, presidential candidate Tymoshenko said about Russian ethnic minority in Donbas: “They must be killed with nuclear weapons”[+][+][+] and parliamentarian Shufrych agreed with her; in August 2021, President Zelensky said in his televised address that those with a pro-Russia identity should leave for Russia[+].
So, if NATO had the right to intervene to save the Kosovar Albanians (despite the illegitimacy[+], with a death toll[+] of more than 500 civilians and economic losses of $29.6 billion), then also Russia had the right to intervene to save their Russian ethnic minority in Ukraine (in Crimea, it was a peacekeeping intervention – unlike NATO, Russians fired no shots, shells, or bombs in Crimea during anarchy and humanitarian crisis caused by Ukrainian protests and revolution, as well as during referendum and annexation[+] period).
In other words, as the humanitarian crisis and the risk to regional stability were equally real in both Kosovo and Crimea, all contra-arguments for comparing those two cases lose their validity when compared thoroughly and considered in a broader context.
One might ask, what is the point of declarations of human rights and the human right to self-determination[+]if it is just words on paper and disregarded? Why shouldn't the people of an autonomous republic have the right to hold a referendum on sovereignty when they feel oppressed, subjugated, discriminated against, and their lives threatened? We are not talking about a handful of people but about millions of people of an autonomous republic. Who has the right to determine, oppress and threaten their lives? What kind of laws and constitutions allows millions of people to be oppressed, subjugated, discriminated against, and unrepresented (Russian ethnicity government officials were illegally thrown out of the central government posts)?
As it turns out, when a group of international arbitrators has vested interests, the abuse of human rights becomes irrelevant. Without giving it enough time and thought, just 11 days after the disputed Crimea referendum, on 27 March 2014, United Nations General Assembly issued a resolution “Calling upon States Not To Recognize The Changes In The Status Of The Crimea Region”[+][+][+] (with the approval of 51.81% of total UN members – 100 out of 193 countries voted for it) rejecting both the validity of the Crimean referendum and its results, illicitly disregarding the will and voluntary choice of the locals as well as their right to self-determination.
That UN resolution declared the Crimean referenduminvalid on both legal and procedural grounds because “the referendum had contravened international law, the United Nations Charter and Ukraine’s Constitution” but no specific reasons were given about how exactly it contravenedother than the presence of Russian troops, which were in fact legally there as Ukraine agreed to it per a Treaty[+] and as perUkrainian president Yanukovych[+] and Crimean government[+] requests for protection and peacekeeping due to threats to the lives of Crimean civilians. The presence of security forces (the UN had no proof that they were Russian troops) on the streets could logically not affect the voting results since voters voted not at the point of a gun but freely and anonymously in closed polling booths while being protected by law enforcement against Ukrainian extremists who were posing threats during that time.
The resolution[+][+][+] didn't at all justify how the Crimean Declaration of Independence contravened international law, the United Nations Charter, and Ukraine’s Constitution when in fact:
✅ the right to self-determination is enshrined in the UN Charter and Ukraine’s Constitution
✅ the UN Charter introduced the notion of self-determination as one of the principal purposes of the United Nations
✅ the United Nations has recognized the utmost importance of the right to self-determination by declaring it a fundamental human right
✅ the International Court of Justice, in a 2010 advisory opinion, declared that unilateral declarations of independence[+] were not illegal under international law
✅ the law acknowledges the right to plead the Kosovo Independence precedent[+]
✅ the law allows remedial secessions in extreme cases of repeated oppression or subjugation of the minority, leaving it with no other option to exercise “internal self-determination” in a meaningful way. As the controversies surrounding remedial secession have revealed, the territorial integrity of a state can be questioned if there are serious and persistent breaches of the human rights of its citizens. States not respecting the right to internal self-determination of their population (minorities) forfeit the protection of their territorial integrity
✅ when Ukraine seceded from the USSR in 1991, it did exactly the same thing as Crimea – it used this right to self-determination, yet Ukrainians deny the residents of Crimea that same right. Double standards should be illegal. At least, the international community should not “stand by Ukraine” or any other duplicitous country.
The UN's decision to regard territorial rights over the human right to self-determination escalated the conflict into a war between Ukrainians and Russians – just 11 days after the confrontational resolution, the Donbas war[+][+] broke out. If the UN resolution had protected the human rights of the Russian ethnic minority rather than the territorial integrity of Ukraine, most likely the Ukrainian military wouldn't have assumed the right to militarily attack Donbas territories and instead would have searched for a diplomatic solution. Many commentators noted that the UN, US, and EU policies might have encouraged the violent actions of the Ukrainian army, which led to war.
Considering what happened to Russian ethnic minorities in Donbas[+], in retrospect, it is clear that the Crimeans made the best decision to quickly rejoin Russia because otherwise, their fate would be as bloody as that of the Donbas people. In other words, Russia saved them from the tyranny of the fascist regime and its neo-Nazi militants, saving thousands of human lives and preventing the destruction, expulsions, and suffering of the locals.
Countries recognizing Russian annexation of Crimea
Furthermore, as some of the UN representatives pointed out, the UN Assembly (excluding 17 countries[+]) had failed to contextualize and consider the Ukrainian violation of treaties with Russia[*], the historical context of the geopolitical dispute, the illegal nature of the regime change that had occurred in Ukraine,and the street clashes between the Ukrainian extremists and pro-Russian separatists in Crimea. Only 11 days were not enough for all UN voters to investigate all the circumstances regarding the referendum, even if they did some preceding inquiries, but with no international presence in Crimea at the time, the UN General Assembly relied solely on the one-sided, biased information coming from Kyiv (even though they were not in Crimea at the time) while wholly and unfairly disregarding the information coming from Crimeans, Russians, and foreign observers (30 foreign parliamentarians and politicians) who were present there.
Another issue with this UN resolution[+][+][+] is, as we pointed out earlier, that the UN promotes the interests of the NATO states (such as the US, EU, and UK), which are a collective enemy or rival of Russia, therefore, any resolution involving Russia is predetermined against Russia. NATO had 31 votes in the UN General Assembly while Russia had just one vote. Plus 55 Commonwealth countries belonging to the UK could never vote against the UK (NATO) interests. In other words, in the UN, NATO and Russia were represented 86:1, which means that the whole UN voting system is unfairly preprogrammed to unjustly defend NATO interests.
Today is Russia NATO's target and tomorrow could be China, India, or any Arab, African, or Latin American nations that might not be able to defend themselves like, for instance, former Yugoslavia and Libya weren't when NATO bombarded them.
Emphasizing the importance of a balanced approach, to be open-minded and fair, we should also take into consideration the Russian allegations that many UN members were coerced (political blackmail and economic threats) to approve the resolution or at least abstain, while others (NATO states) had their own anti-Russian self-serving agenda. UN diplomats confirm[+] the big powers have been known to attempt to “buy” votes with a combination of carrots and sticks, giving an example of the United States punishing countries that refused to stand with it on the Security Council for crucial votes. After Yemen voted against a council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq in 1991 to expel it from Kuwait, Washington cut off millions of dollars in aid to Sanaa.
This biased UN resolution only made things worse as it was confrontational and counterproductive. International condemnation sealed by a UN resolution only exacerbated the situation and war incentive, as well as served to stoke Russian nationalism and President Putin’s domestic popularity. It would be curious to find out how exactly many of the UN Assembly voters came to the rash decision to approve the resolution when they made no local inspection or inquiry. To be open-minded and fair, we should take into consideration the allegations that many UN members were coerced to approve the resolution, while others had their own anti-Russian self-serving agenda – such as to diminish Russian power and the Russian Black Sea Fleet so as to gain more power in the Black Sea and Mediterranean region.
Who makes international laws anyway? Are representatives of vulnerable minorities among those lawmakers? Because this is very important for a law to be just rather than just protecting the interests of majorities regardless of their tyranny.
Do many people really need to be murdered and fall into a humanitarian crisis for an ethnic minority to have the right to declare independence and secede from the parent state? How far a violation of fundamental human rights may go before the UN or international law condemns the violator and allows the remedial secession to the victims?
The criteria for exercising and recognizing the right of self-determination and remedial secession must be applied uniformly and not à la carte. However, every situation is different and calls for case-specific action. Sovereignty and territorial integrity are not assured or absolute when a State abuses the rights of its inhabitants.
In the case of both Crimea and Donbas, with a Responsibility to Protect (R2P)[+] (global principle since the adoption of the UN World Summit Outcome Document in 2005), the international community should have provided the aid necessary to prevent a major humanitarian catastrophe but it failed to do it. Only Russia did that. By intervening, Russia prevented the civil war and atrocities in Crimea, for which it should be commended rather than condemned. Russia had the right to intervene with its peacekeeping or security troops because it is one of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, entrusted by the Organization’s membership with primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Besides, who has the right to judge if some folk is oppressed enough to have the right to secede (like Kosovo)? Who gives them that right? And what are the exact criteria or parameters for the exercise of a right to remedial secession?
As already stated, by issuing their resolution, the UN Assembly (excluding 17 countries[+]) had failed to contextualize and consider the Ukrainian violation of treaties with Russia[*], the historical context of the geopolitical dispute, the illegal nature of the regime change that had occurred in Ukraine,and the street clashes between the Ukrainian extremists and pro-Russian separatists in Crimea.
But context matters. And history matters. It all has to be evaluated against a background of so-called Maidan revolution (US-backed regime change coup) in February 2014 and new regime-sponsored anti-Russian violence and hate speech that has fueled the conflict, as well as neo-Nazi paramilitaries threatening to invade Crimea right after they staged that violent, paramilitary coup in Kyiv that installed an illegal and unconstitutional far-right government. Russian soldiers, who were legally there by virtue of The 1997 Partition Treaty on the Status and Conditions of the Black Sea Fleet[+] between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, were the only guarantors at the time able to prevent a neo-Nazi bloodbath from taking place in Crimea as it had already taken place in Kyiv in February and then spread to the rest of Ukraine. After Maidan Revolution, Ukraine quickly descended into civil war as the new regime in Kyiv launched a low-intensity war in March-April 2014 against the people of the historic Donbas region (the two territories of Donetsk and Luhansk). Moreover, the new anti-Russian US-puppet regime swore to abolish Crimea’s hard-fought and hard-won fully constitutional autonomy within Ukraine. That escalation was stopped in its tracks by Russia’s military operation[+]
The new Kyiv regime’s3 anti-Russian rhetoric and the involvement of the far right, which held key ministerial positions, provoked fear among the ethnic Russian minority in Crimea and Donbas. Crimeans’ decision was further fueled by years of economic stagnation and growing poverty, as well as deep anger at the corrupt, authoritarian regime and its oligarch backers. With Crimea already one of the poorest parts of Ukraine, many Crimeans feared that the new Kyiv regime would increase already harsh austerity measures, resulting in their living standards falling even further. As a Canadian independent journalist at an independent watchdog journalism organization MintPress News reported[+] based on interviews with Crimean people, because they always identified as Russian, to punish them, Ukraine didn’t build any hospitals, kindergartens, or roads. In a civilized society, this is not acceptable.
Crimeans asked[+] Moscow for help and Russia came to rescue. Putin said: “There is no legitimate executive power in Ukraine. There is no one to talk with”. Indeed, the new revolutionary self-appointed undemocratic, illegitimate government had no legal authority to rule over autonomous Crimea.
Considering all that, one can’t help but wonder how much higher the threshold of unbearable oppression and threat of neo-Nazi bloodbath has to be in order to warrant remedial secession or other intervention under R2P[+]. This begs the question: who has the right, authority, and credibility to decide who has or has not the right to self-determination. The people of Crimea have earned a right to political self-determination through decades of struggle. They exercised this right in March 2014 by voting to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation just like Kosovo did in 2008 by voting to secede from Serbia, which was granted.
Russian President Vladimir Putin defended the vote calling the referendum "in compliance with the norms of international law, in particular with Article 1 of the UN Charter that stipulates the principle of equality and self-determination of peoples."
The days of Western powers deciding which countries get to hold elections and which must endure coups and assassinations of their elected leaders are drawing to a close. The brave Crimean people and their fellow citizens of the Russian Federation are blazing a path towards a world of greater democracy and national sovereignty. The faster the world travels down this path, the quicker and more effective will be the global response to the most pressing and urgent issue of our times, namely, the deadly rise of American imperialist militarism in the parts of the world suffering under Western domination.
A series of polls taken after the referendum by reputable Western polling companies – Gallup, Pew Centre, and Levada Centre – all showed overwhelming support for the decision to join Russia. This punches a big hole in the “Russian invasion” narrative. The referendum has been heavily disputed in Western media, with claims that Crimeans were forced to hold the referendum and claims of Russian troops on the streets “occupying” the peninsula. Western media insisted the referendum was a sham held under duress but all polling companies refuted that, which Western media omitted to mention. Also, all the later Western inquiries[+] and polls[+][+][+][+][+][+] confirm that some 93% of Crimeans preferred to be independent from Ukraine and join Russia.
Apart from the (legal but perceived as illegal) presence of the Russian military in Crimea, and a violation of the Ukrainian Constitution (which didn't bother them in the case of Kosovo's secession that was violating the Constitution of Serbia), some had an issue with no international presence being permitted at the time of the Crimean referendum and annexation but it is not true as they were indeed permitted by the local authorities and there were 30 foreign parliamentarians and politicians who observed it and so no fault in it.
It was the Kyiv authorities who banned international presence at the Crimean referendum and threatened the observers with sanctions as they warned that any participation in the electoral process in Crimea would be illegal. But then again, we all know that the main reason was that they knew the results were most likely going to be in favor of Russia (because the majority of the population there was Russian ethnic) and would expose how many Crimeans truly disliked the Ukrainian government and wanted to secede.
The administration of Crimea invited and permitted representatives of the CIS Election Monitoring[+] – an international non-governmental organization founded by the Commonwealth of Independent States. Western election monitoring organizations (OSCE, ODIHR, and the EU) were not officially invited by Crimean authorities[+], because NATO countries considered the Crimean referendum illegitimate, so there was no point in inviting them to monitor it because they could not attend it, as sending electoral observers there would provide legitimacy to the referendum and the annexation. After all, by participating in monitoring missions on any unrecognized territories (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk), Western countries’ parliamentarians and political parties would contribute to legitimating the non-recognized regimes and damage their reputation.
The Crimean authorities didn’t want to invite just any international observers from the NATO countries anyway because they had a vested interest in sabotaging the referendum, denying the results, and preventing the annexation (NATO wanted Crimea with Ukraine to be annexed by the EU eventually). Civic Control Association (CCA) coordinated a bulk of foreign observers of the referendum – more than 30 foreign parliamentarians and politicians – predominantly representing European far-right parties and organizations – observed the Crimean referendum.
The legitimacy of Western monitoring agencies such as OSCE, ODIHR, and the EU observers crumbled after Russia found out that some of them were undercover spies[+] and secret informers, providing targeting intelligence about Russian separatist forces to the Ukrainian military. It is no secret that many if not most of the observers are fake or biased, which is why Crimeans had the right to suspect those from the West[?]. We are referring to the increasing phenomenon of “biased observation”—a form of more politically-motivated election observation whose chief objective is to mislead the public regarding the regularity of some political process or the legitimacy of an election result. Also, there have been cases when observers were sentenced to years of prison time after critically reporting on fraudulent elections, which also indicates that observers are sometimes or often threatened to either report or not report anomalies.
Then there is also the issue of notorious Foreign electoral intervention[+] whereby governments attempt to covertly or overtly influence elections in another country – obviously, Crimeans wanted to prevent that (they didn't consider Russian intervention as foreign). According to the American researcher and author Dov H. Levin, among 938 national elections examined by him from 1946 to 2000, the United States intervened in 81 foreign elections, while the Soviet Union or Russia intervened in 36. According to another study, as reported also by Washington Post[+], the US engaged in 72 covert and overt attempts at regime change during the Cold War (1947-1991) alone. According to Wikipedia's report on the United States' involvement in regime change[+], since 2000, the US masterminded at least 8 regime changes, not even counting many other ones such as Ukraine – as if the presence of the officials of the US presidential administration among the anti-government protesters and opposition leaders favored by the US, such as US Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy, Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, US Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt, and US Congressman Devin Nunes meant nothing – why did all these busy US government officials bother to come in person and give moral and material encouragement to protesters rather than support the government if not to help in regime change?!
The US officials violated the UN Resolution 2131 of 21 December 1965[+], which regulates the inadmissibility of interference in the internal affairs of a stateto protect its independence and its sovereignty. The US officials illegally interfered in the internal affairs of Ukraine and should be brought to justice.
There are whole books on the topic of meddling in the ballot box and partisan electoral interventions, so we can't give it sufficient attention here other than point to that phenomenon, which discloses the illusion of democracy in many targeted states.
One such state was Ukraine in the 2014 regime change and presidential as well as parliamentary elections, as we are about to explain, whereby the EU and the US influenced the results through propaganda, heavily supporting preferential candidates through the supply of promotional material, consulting services, media exposure, resources, moral and material encouragement, technological aid and professional advice, as well as fake or biased monitoring of elections (not reporting irregularities), while Russia disrupted it by cyberattacks (didn't attempt to influence results as there were no pro-Russian candidates that could have won the elections by any meddling).
When it comes to Russia's intervention in Crimea, the Western world had literally no way of knowing what actually happened in Crimea because they were not present at the time. So-called "facts" were coming out of Kyiv, whereas the facts from those who were present there were dismissed. Ukrainian central government had a vested interest in portraying themselves as victims and presenting a mass of disinformation, thus to call their version of events “facts” is beyond irrational. Still, these “facts” were accepted because they suited the Western agenda, which was to further demonize Putin and Russia so that Russia as their major rival loses power and they gain more justifications to implement measures against it. As usual, it's all about money and power. It is a long trade war and information war between the EU and Russia, as well as a fight for power between NATO and Russia.
In all fairness, we should point out that it is quite peculiar that there was a quick UN resolution[+][+] against the Crimean referendum and secession but no UN resolution and no emergency meeting of the UN Security Council whatsoever when anti-government protesters in Kyiv got violent in February 2014 forcefully storming the Presidential Administration building and the Cabinet building (1 December 2013), illegally occupying the Kyiv City Hall (1 December 2013 - 16 February 2014), and the parliament building, the president's administration quarters, the Cabinet building, and the Interior Ministry (since 21 February 2014), attacking and killing policemen on the streets of Kyiv along with undemocratically overthrowing the elected government, as well as after the snap 2014 presidential election that should have been invalidated by the UN for at least five main reasons:
1. Voter turnoutwas below the legal threshold, as according to Ukrainian law[+], a snap election must have a voter turnout higher than 50%, which was not the case – the total number of eligible voters was around 35.5 million but only around 18 million people cast a ballot, which was less than 50%. Mark Twain once famously said that there are three types of lies: “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The Ukrainian authorities falsely and unlawfully presented voter turnout as 60% because they excluded the regions that were “not under government control” (Donbas and Crimea) although they claimed those regions as Ukraine. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the official voter turnout (excluded some regions) was even lower, 52.42% – unlawfully deducting the eligible voters in areas where voting was not made possible. Calculating the turnout in such a manner was unlawful because no electoral regulation ratifies the exclusion of any region or eligible constituency under any circumstances! Government has a duty to ensure everyone the possibility to vote but the interim government of the time failed (and didn’t care) to do so for over 5,5 million eligible voters, who were discounted (certainly for the reason that they were sure to vote for pro-Russian candidates), which invalidates the legitimacy of those elections that should have been postponed until the possibility to vote was granted equally to everyone. Even by discounting millions of voters, the alleged turnout of 60% was much lower than the average voter turnout of 72% in previous presidential elections, so such a low turnout suggests some foul play in which many people obviously didn't want to participate – many people questioned the validity of the election. What is more, there is a dispute about what constitutes “not under government control” anyway because, at that time, there was no legitimate government, as the opposition undemocratically and unconstitutionally forced itself into the government position. Therefore, it could be argued that Donbas was indeed under democraticallyelected government control and all other regions were not. Furthermore, Ukraine continues to claim Crimea as an integral part of its territory but it has denied its people the possibility to vote in all elections – how can that be lawful? In summary, to our knowledge, regarding voter turnout count, no law allows disenfranchising or discounting or excluding any region or eligible constituency under any circumstances, therefore any such act is unlawful and so, by law, the voter turnout was then lower than 50%, which was below the legal threshold and therefore snap 2014 presidential election should have been invalidated. The US and EU were pleased with the election results because it suited their agenda, thus they and their allies quickly praised the election endorsing the vote. Draw your own conclusions about it.
2. Morally unacceptable electorate manipulations took place, such as administrative tricks to get more votes for a particular party, disenfranchisement, voter intimidation, disinformation, corruption, banning assault, harassment, and libel, as the election was restricted – it was not held everywhere in Ukraine – most ballot stations in regions with Russian ethnic minorities were not open for polling, as they legally should have been. Russian ethnic minority voters, that is, pro-Russian voters were hindered to vote. For instance, in the pro-Russian Donbas region, only 426 ballot stations were open for polling instead of all 2.430, disabling 80% of the Russophone[?] Donbas population to cast a vote – this alone should have questioned the legitimacy of the elections.
3. Pro-Russian candidateswere hindered to run for office – as opposed to all previous elections, there were no well-known pro-Russian candidates in the elections as the established Russian ethnic minority leaders were forced into exile or arrested on charges of leading a separatist movement (and after the elections cleared of charges in the absence of proof, which is telling of the political motive behind the arrestment). Ukraine's Pro-Russian candidate quit the presidential race[+] because it was too "dangerous" for him to continue his presidential campaign, as he was beaten by pro-Ukrainian activists in Kyiv. What kind of laws and constitution allows an ethnicity with millions of people to be unrepresented in the elections?
4. No equal chances for all parties – the pro-Russian Party of Regions was hindered to run presidential campaigns in many regions – it was the biggest party in Ukraine between 2006 and 2014. providing several Ukrainian Presidents and Prime Ministers but ahead of the 2014 elections, the party's symbol and activities were banned in many regions governed by ultra-nationalists, thus they were illegally prevented to campaign in those regions.
5. Corrupt election observation with biased international observers[+] – Ukraine only sent election monitoring invitations to the pro-EU monitoring organizations and not to the pro-Russian CIS Election Monitoring Organization. This was not only unfair but also intentional in order to cover up all the irregularities surrounding the elections. See also Election fraud in the 2014 Parliamentary Elections[+]
The Western community disregarded these issues of constitutionality and legitimacy of the 2014 election as well as its procedural irregularities because the results suited them, as a pro-EU government was then instituted.
If the UN, the international lawmakers, and the media had applied the Golden Rule Rule[+] and so have reacted the same as they would expect others to react if this would happen in their own countries, then the victims of both revolution and the unconstitutional election would not need to ask Russia to intervene, therefore the conflict would be resolved politically and diplomatically. In other words, the UN's unfair reaction has fueled the separatist movements in victimized parts of Ukraine (with Russian ethnicity) and caused a chain of events with a domino effect that led to the war in Ukraine that is de facto NATO-Russian war. This is not to blame anyone but to appeal to the UN officials, international lawmakers, and the media to learn their lessons so as to avoid the same kind of conflicts to occur anywhere in the world in the future. Also, mistakes should be admitted, regretted, apologized for, and corrected by offering some sort of compensation to the victims (e.g., pushing the Ukrainian government to issue an apology and implement the laws that better protect the rights of minorities).
To objective and neutral observers, it remains unclear and controversial on what legal grounds was it possible for the UN Assembly to declare the Crimean referendum to violate the Ukrainian Constitution but not the restricted, undemocratic 2014 presidential election (the EU even quickly praised the election[+]) as well as the Kyiv anti-government protesters forcefully and illegally occupying government buildings and the Kyiv City Hall (1 December 2013 - 16 February 2014), and the unconstitutional overthrow of the government.
If the Crimean referendum was condemned as a violation of the Ukrainian Constitution, then to be fair, also all the other unconstitutional deeds should be condemned as well. Otherwise, such a double standards policy only provokes conflicts as victims and their allies would naturally oppose injustice. To prevent wars, the UN needs to prohibit double-dealing resolutions.
Moreover, the same UN's inconsistent or double standards are apparent when comparing Crimea's secession with that of the Kosovo[+] and Falkland Islands[+] referendum, which were deemed valid and in accordance with international law whereby receiving international recognition, although the circumstances were the same as in the Crimea case, with 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence[+] violating the Constitution of Serbia in the first case while in the other, British military was present during the referendum on previously Argentinian territory.
This inconsistency or double-dealing scheme suggests foul play, which needs to be revised and amended. Each of us needs to ask ourselves, why exactly did the international community approve and recognized the restricted, undemocratic 2014 Ukrainian presidential election as well as the earlier Kyivan coup d'état (the unconstitutional and undemocratic overthrow of the government) as well as the separation of Kosovo and the Falkland Islands sovereignty referendum but not the Crimean referendum? Let's all think about it with our own heads. Could there be some foul play there?
Because, for this or any truce to be proposed, well-founded and effective, all the arguments on both sides must be truthful and dealings fair. There can be no truce between the conflicted nations if the Golden Rule[+]and the virtue of sincerity, righteousness, and fairness were not in play or if double standards were at play.
During and in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian Euromaidan protests[+] (3 months, 21.11.2013 – 22.2.2014) and the Maidan Revolution[+] (6 days, 18–23.2.2014) (both against the pro-Russian President of Ukraine and his administration, who preferred closer ties to Russia and the EEU[+] rather than with the EU), which had paralyzed the central government, destabilized the country and propped up anarchy, Ukrainians discarded the Constitution of Ukraine (violated its provisions and wanted to reinstate the older 2004 Constitution, which would significantly limit the powers of the president), dismissed the Constitutional Court, and unconstitutionally overthrew the Ukrainian government, as the protesters stormed the Presidential Administration building and the Cabinet building as well as illegally occupying the Kyiv City Hall for two-and-a-half months (1 December 2013 - 16 February 2014) and the parliament building, the president's administration quarters, the Cabinet building, and the Interior Ministry (on 21 February 2014) and as far-right anti-Russian leaders of the opposition incited armed confrontation (with almost 2.000 casualties – armed protesters were resisting law enforcement and killed 18[+] and wounded 200–300 police officers as well as 116[+] [officially 48] opponents in Odesa clashes[+][+][+][»] in May, for which they should be held criminally liable even if it was allegedly in self-defense, the same as the ones killing and beating the “heavenly” protesters should) – so, in the absence of a legitimate central government and the dismissal of the Constitution, regional legislatures became the only legal authorities, thus Crimean Parliament had the legal authority to propose and hold a referendum.
At the time, a few days after the Ukrainian central government was undemocratically overthrown (on 27 February 2014, The Crimean Supreme Council voted to hold a referendum on the status of Crimea), the Crimean parliament decided to ask Crimeans (the majority were Russian ethnicity) what they wanted in a situation of the perceived illegal coup and anarchy in Ukraine (with hostile anti-Russian activities and threats to lives of Crimean civilians), thus under the requested protection of Russian forces, a referendum[+] was held on 16 March and Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia (97% voted for it with 83% voter turnout).
The 2014 referendum in Crimea was an exercise of peoples' right to internal self-determination via democratic free expression of the will of the Autonomous Republic's population. Holding a referendum in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea[+] was not a violation of the Ukrainian Constitution and international law. The referendum could not have been authorized by the central Ukraine government because Ukrainians illegally overthrew their government and Constitution at the time at which time regional legislatures became the only legal authorities. The Ukrainian Revolution had created an ‘extreme situation’ in which Crimea’s right to self-determination could not be exercised any longer in the undemocratic constitutional framework of Ukraine. Under international law, “remedial secession” is allowed in extreme cases of repeated oppression or subjugation of the minority, leaving it with no other option to exercise internal self-determination in a meaningful way but to then seek out its external self-determination. Crimea’s secession was legal as the territorial integrity of a state can be discarded when there are serious and persistent breaches of the human rights of its citizens. States not respecting the right to internal self-determination of their population forfeit the protection of their territorial integrity. Russia annexed Crimea only afterward when it was not part of Ukraine any longer.
Furthermore, even if Ukraine’s Constitution were not officially dismissed by the anti-government protesters at the time of the Crimean referendum, Constitution was ambiguous concerning the separation of powers, which is also an argument in favor of the Crimeans having the power and right to hold a referendum. Moreover, the protesters were actually calling for comprehensive constitutional reforms, including judicial reforms, decentralization, and the separation of powers, which should have also given the right and power to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea[+] to hold a referendum without approval from the central illegally self-appointed government.
Taking all these factors into account, the 2014 referendum in Crimea was not a violation of the Ukrainian Constitution but rather the overthrow of the government was unconstitutional and undemocratic.
It is worth knowing that the first 1992 Crimean Constitution[+]accords greater powers to the Crimean parliament, including full sovereign powers to establish relations with other states, which provided referendum choices. This Constitution was later revised over the next few years by the Ukrainian parliament, denying the Autonomous Republic of Crimea some initial rights. Ukrainians refused the Crimeans their right to self-determination, which escalated the political crisis that had led to the vote for reunification with Russia.
The Crimean people had not been asked in 1954 whether they wanted to be part of Ukraine or not, as legally they should have, whereas in the 2014 referendum, they were asked during a Ukrainian revolution (that ditched the Constitution and ousted the government by force, so regional legislatures, such as Crimean, became the only legal authorities) and they chose to rejoin Russia.
The referendum was not recognized by most countries, mainly on the ground of the presence of the Russian military forces, which were actually legally there per a Treaty[+] with Ukraine and which Crimean authorities[+] asked for because of the threat from the Ukrainian nationalists who would not accept the referendum results and threatened the lives of Crimean civilians and separatists, whom they harassed and oppressed in the wake of Ukrainian revolution that overthrew the pro-Russian government. Without the military support of Russia, secession would not have been possible, which is why the legal Ukrainian president Yanukovych[+] and Crimean government[+] asked Russia to intervene. It must be noted that not a single bullet had been shot, which validifies Russian military intervention or presence as “peacekeeping”.
According to a Treaty[+], Ukraine agreed to lease Crimean naval facilities to Russia and allowed Russia to maintain up to 25.000 troops, 24 artillery systems, 132 armored vehicles, and 22 military planes on the Crimean Peninsula, for which Ukraine was receiving a lot of money, so the presence of the Russian military forces was legal there and thus can't be the grounds for declaring the referendum invalid. By law, by a legal contract, Russian military had every right to be there. Russians had a legitimate military protecting their strategic facilities there, as authorized by Kyiv itself.
Also, on 1 March 2014, the local authorities, namely Crimea’s prime minister Aksyonov, asked[+][+][+] Russian President Putin for protection and assistance in maintaining peace and calm in the peninsula, thereby giving the permission for them to be outside the military bases and be armed. The presence of armed security personnel at polling places during the referendum on 16 March was also legally requested by the Crimean authorities to ensure stability and safety during voting after months of street protests and clashes, or as Russian President Putin put it: "to ensure proper conditions for the people of Crimea to be able to freely express their will”.
Also, the same day, on 1 March, still the legitimate[?] President of Ukraine Yanukovych requested[+] an armed intervention from Russia. Yanukovych could legally authorize intervention during his trip to Russia as he was legally still Ukraine's President as he was unconstitutionally and unlawfully deposed (without the impeachment process for criminal acts under Article 108 of the Ukrainian constitution) and forced to flee (his life was threatened, his car shot at).
At the United Nations Security Council session on 3 March 2014, Russian representative Vitali Churkin pointed out[+] that the Russian Federation increased its military strength in Crimea to 16.000 soldiers, which was still way below the threshold (25.000) set up by the Black Sea Fleet agreement.
But according to the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service, on 7 March, Russia raised the number of its soldiers in Crimea to 30.000, which, if it was true at all (just claims without any evidence), would be then 5.000 more than the agreed, but this would be then at the requests of both the Ukrainian president Yanukovych[+] and legitimate Crimean government[+], which feared attack from extremists, ultra-nationalists, Crimean Tatars, and far-right anti-Russian Euromaidan protesters.
Russia was accused of violating the Treaty, other agreements, and the terms of the Budapest Memorandum[+][+] on Security Assurances for nuclear disarmament of Ukraine, but they omit to mention that it was Ukraine that first violated all treaties with Russia and applied to join NATO in 2008 as well as continued and escalated its violations in first couple months of 2014, which was why Crimeans themselves asked Russia to protect and annex them. Moreover, Russia’s use of military was not used “against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine” but for maintaining peace and calm in the peninsula. The Russian Armed Forces did not establish a military occupation regime; they served as a peacekeeping force that did not fire even a single shot.
The famous “little green men”[+]that allegedly invaded Crimea where not Russian citizens but were in fact 20.000 Ukrainian Crimean soldiers who defected to Russian side, renounced their allegiance to Kyiv, and removed Ukrainian patches from their uniforms – so, they became “little green men” in the media because they had no longer Ukrainian insignia on their uniforms. As explained[»][»] by Jacques Baud (Swiss Colonel Chief of Staff, former secret service agent and head of Doctrine for UN peacekeeping operations in New York) also in his fascinating book[+] “Russian Art of War”, they were not from Russia but were ethnic Russians from Crimea, Ukrainian citizens – a distinction that Kyiv and Western media omitted to mention, which is why it was easy to convince the oblivious Westerners that Russian military invaded Crimea. This was not an invasion but the local troops switching sides.
nasty “little green men”
The presence of the Russian military in Crimea was no secret as they have been legally there since 1783 and certified per a Treaty[+] with Kyiv whereby Ukraine received $526 million in compensation and $97 million annually for leasing Crimean bases to Russia that was agreed to keep up to 25.000 troops there. They were not “little green men”.
Also, the circumstances of all agreements changed because of Ukrainian revolution that endangered lives of many members of Russian ethnic minority, including the President and Prime Minister. While Ukrainians and their allies have been very vocal about Russia breaching some agreements, they neglect to address the more severe underlying issue of Ukraine hitherto breaching all agreements with Russia, illegally overthrowing the elected government, and violating the human rights of people of Russian ethnicity, which provoked the conflict with Russia. It was not Russia but Ukraine that started the conflict. Apart from expelling pro-Russian high officials from office and violating several treaties with Russia, Ukraine refused to allow the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to be self-governing and to provide "the protection of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious originality of national minorities on their territory" as previously agreed.
After the results of the referendum, on 17 March 2014, the Crimean parliament officially declared its independence from Ukraine and requested full accession to the Russian Federation. Therefore, after Russia recognized[+] Crimea’s independence on 17 March 2014, Crimea was then de facto no longer Ukraine, which is why from then on Russian forces had the right to intervene to secure a peaceful transition and to defend Russian assets under the threats of Ukrainian extremists' takeover of Russian military infrastructure. Russian forces didn't invade Crimea but assisted the Crimeans in exerting their right to self-determination. Crimeans wanted them there.
If Ukraine had accepted the will of the Crimean people, their ally Russia would not have had to acquire territory or change borders by force.
Despite the referendum’s alleged shortcomings, it seems reasonable to assume that the Russian-speaking majority among the Crimean population (67.9%[+] Crimean population identified themselves as Russians) then supported Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and it rejoining Russia. Therefore, even if the referendum was held without the presence of Russian forces, it is safe to conclude that most local Russians would vote to rejoin Russia rather than Ukraine, especially because Ukraine denied Crimea their rights to self-governance and self-determination.
For many locals, the choice was as much economic as political because, under Ukrainian rule, Crimea became extremely economically destitute. Their decision reflected their deep dissatisfaction with the state of economic and political affairs in Ukraine, as well as the widespread incompetence and rampant corruption in Kyiv's central government.
In conclusion, if the presence of Russian armed security forces during the referendum is the only issue to accept the will of the people majority of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, this could be solved by a new referendum held without them, with ODIHR observers along with CIS Election Monitoring Organization and in full compliance with international law standards. However, no one is suggesting that because everyone is very well aware of the fact that the results would be in favor of Russia because Crimea people are mostly ethnic Russians because their living conditions have significantly improved since they are under Russia's governance. All Western polls[+][+][+][+][+] and inquiries[+] confirm it that Crimeans are very satisfied by being part of Russia now and prefer Moscow to Kyiv, which is rather embarrassing for Kyiv. Russian government is taking much better care of them than Kyiv regime used to.
Remedial Secession
Remedial secession doctrine, which is valid under international law, accepts that the right to external self-determination confers the right to unilaterally separate from the parent state when a group of people (an ethnic minority) suffers serious and systematic human rights violations, under specific conditions. Russia justifies the annexation of Crimea and other regions through remedial secession, namely through a humanitarian intervention to support local Russian populations in their struggle for independence from a genocidal oppressor.
Remedial secession is limited to truly extreme circumstances, such as an outright armed attack by the parent state but also threatening the very existence of the people in question. This is exactly what happened during Maidan revolution and in the wake of it (February and March 2014) with new illegitimate regime recruiting, arming, and authorizing anti-Russian, neo-Nazi battalions to murder and terrorize anti-Maidan protesters who were mostly ethnic Russians.
Since January 2014, US-backed gangs of malicious hooligans and militants started wrecking chaos and murdering protesters to trigger revolt and create conditions for a regime change favorable to the US and NATO. The culprits of atrocities took high positions in government and as that regime is in power ever since, they have covered up the traces of their crimes helped with the NATO secret services such as CIA and MI6. They eliminated many pro-Russian protesters, politicians, journalists, and activists, shifting blame of all the murders during revolution onto the riot police of the former government and alleged suicides[+][+][+] and mysterious deaths[+]. However, truth has ways to come out and with new evidence[+][+], it is ever more obvious that Russian ethnic minorities in Crimea, Donbas, and elsewhere had every right to fear for their lives and seek protection from Russia.
Since 19 February 2014[+], Ukrainian extremists set up checkpoints in Kyiv, doubled them along the border[+], and then on all roads leading to Crimea and other southern and eastern regions were millions of Russian ethnic minorities live, where they beat up, tyrannized, arrested, detained, and sometimes tortured[+], maimed, and murdered ethnic Russians and those suspected of any sympathies for Russia – all those checkpoints were not set up for nothing.
The concerns of Crimeans were also confirmed by the letter of President of Ukraine Yanukovych in which he asked[+] Putin to use force to protect the people of Ukraine from terror and violence. Apart from that, Crimeans’ concernsand decision to seek protection from Russia as well as secede from Ukraine were validated by the fact that those violent anti-Russian, neo-Nazis already ousted the President, Prime Minister, and other government officials by force, and were on their way to do the same with the local officials in Crimea but were stopped in their tracks by a swift response from Crimean authorities and their Russian allies.
For a remedial secession to be validated, according to cruel Western “experts”[+]primary condition is evidence substantiating the allegation of genocide. In other words, they suggest that a secession cannot be granted unless there is genocide taking place. This is as cruel as allowing women to divorce their repressive husbands only if they could prove he killed many of her family and friends – utterly deplorable! Remedial secession is supposed to prevent genocide rather than come as a result of it. Those who cared to look have seen enough evidence of discrimination, ethnic cleansing, and existential threat but the very same Western “experts” do not grant a remedial secession even after an evident humanitarian catastrophe in last years of war.
Furthermore, the doctrine of remedial secession as expression of external self-determination requires the intention to secede to be genuinely and freely expressed by the majority of the affected population. This condition was met by the results (97% in favor of reunification with Russia) of the 2014 referendum and reaffirmed by the results of 2024 Russian presidential elections, when Crimean people overwhelmingly (95%) voted for Putin with international observers having no objections.
Only utterly devious people can claim that Crimean people were forced to vote to secede from Ukraine, as everyone remotely aware of situation in Crimea would attest to the fact that vast majority of Crimeans despise Ukrainians and love their fellow Russians.
And only cunning individuals can ignore the amount of development in Crimea since reunification with Russia, which further proves satisfaction and gratitude Crimean people feel towards Russia. Not to mention that despite the war since 2014, salaries, pensions, and human rights have increased (in comparison with under the Kyiv rule), and infrastructure is no longer neglected like under Ukraine. Plus, Russia quickly resolved all land and construction permit problems that were pending in Ukraine for decades. So, clearly, the intention to secede not only was genuinely and freely expressed by the majority but it even increased. In other words, Crimea people do not want Ukrainians to “liberate” them as they are already liberated by Russia and will never forget how badly Ukrainians have treated them.
Furthermore, because of its remedial nature, separation should be the last resort, and less radical solutions should be attempted first. This condition for remedial secession was also fulfilled by two Minsk agreements, all of which Ukraine constantly violated, and with eight years of Russia trying everything possible to resolve the situation by peaceful, political means. This clearly demonstrates good faith efforts to fit remedial secession requirements with concrete evidence of Minsk agreements and other relevant negotiations and appeals undertaken by Russian authorities by international institutions, including the UN.
Most importantly, after Kyiv and its Western backers or masters failed to honor the Minsk agreements for eight long years, murdering thousands upon thousands of civilians, wounding many more and forcing millions of ethnic Russians to flee homes, the conditions for a right to remedial secession were thus clearly met and not just in Crimea but in all of south-eastern Ukraine. As the culprits of those atrocities, biased Kyiv and its Western masters with their puppets among the Western “experts” have no right to determine whether the conditions for a right to remedial secession were met or not.
Furthermore, under the remedial secession doctrine, Crimea’s recognition could have been subordinated to commitment to respecting minority rights of Russian ethnic minority but Kyiv not only did not show any such commitment but it only increased its discrimination and atrocities to this day. This is evidenced by documented violations of human rights and humanitarian law, including the attacks against ethnic Russian civilians and even children. It is also evidenced by Ukraine passing education and language laws in 2017 and 2019 prohibiting the use of Russian language in 30 spheres of public life. A commitment to respecting minority rights is the opposite of that, thus Ukraine has no legal means to oppose remedial secession.
4) The Principle of Reciprocity in the Law of Treaties (Ukraine breached the agreements with Russia and the Crimeans, thus Russia and Crimea had the right to reciprocate)
These are the agreements[*] that facilitated Crimea to be part of Ukraine. Since Ukraine violated them, this is the another reason why there is no legal basis for Ukraine to claim Crimea. Disregarding certain accords[*], Ukraine applied to join NATO and refused to allow the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to be self-governing, as well as to provide "the protection of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious originality of national minorities on their territory". There are consequences for violating agreements. In this case, because their right to internal self-determination was violated, Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine.
Ukraine also violated international law and the United Nations Charter's norms on self-determination[+] as in years ahead of the referendum, it didn't allow Crimeans to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law, binding on the United Nations as an authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms. Based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, Crimeans had and have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference, especially for the reason that Crimea had the special status of the Autonomous Republic.
Most sovereign states do not recognize the right to self-determination through secession in their constitutions. However, there are several existing models of self-determination through decentralization, greater autonomy, and secession. In liberal constitutional democracies, the principle of majority rule has dictated whether a minority can exercise their right to self-determination and secede, which is rather inhumane, as no one should have the right to determine the life and development of another group of people. By denying human rights to others, one reaps the same eventually, one way or another.
It is important to distinguish that regions with autonomous status[+] should have much greater rights for self-governing and self-determination than other regions. Therefore, if the Crimeans could not make any important decisions without the approval of the central government in the capital Kyiv, then they were robbed of their autonomy.
The definition of autonomy greatly varies between nations. According to Wikipedia[+], an autonomous area is defined as an area of a country that has a degree of autonomy or freedom from an external authority. In governmental parlance, autonomy refers to self-governance. According to the Encyclopedia of Global Justice[+], autonomy means not being under the control of another, and political autonomy[+] implies self-governing, thus not under the control of a higher level of government. According to the encyclopedia of Ukraine, autonomy[+] is a condition under which a sociopolitical entity determines its own laws.
Autonomy should give people more rights to self-determination, some legislative powers, and extra political liberties, so when those rights, powers, and liberties are violated and the majority of autonomous folk feel oppressed, discriminated and their human rights abused, under international law, they have the right to declare independence (as in the case of Kosovo) and join any other country they choose. As we already explained, under international law, “remedial secession” is legal in extreme cases of repeated oppression or subjugation of the minority with serious and persistent breaches of human rights.
Under Ukrainian governance, Crimeans underwent the so-called tyranny of the majority[+] in which the majority of an electorate had pursued exclusively its own objectives at the expense of those of the minority factions, involving distortion of democracy preconditions in the form of centralization excess (the centralized power made decisions that should be local, breaking with the commitment to the subsidiarity principle and the right of self-government of the Autonomous Republic), the ambiguous constitutional separation of powers (legislative, executive and judiciary), and the rule upon numbers rather than rightness or excellence. This resulted in the oppression of Russian minority groups, which is why in Crimea and Donbas, separatist movements grew stronger over the years.
Due to such Ukrainian bad governance and abidance by ultra-nationalists’ directives, the country turned into anarchy. There is no point in blaming anyone else, instead, it is more useful to consider culpability, (the lack of) accountability and take responsibility for collective mistakes so as to move toward conflict resolution. In all honesty, Ukrainians need to review some of their policies and actions, admit their mistakes, atone for their faults, and move forward, especially if they require the other side to do the same. It takes two to tango and to enter into a war, so instead of playing the blame game and wallowing in victimhood, the first step in moving forward toward conflict resolution is to take self-responsibility, which is only possible by collectively activating and cultivating the virtues of courage to facing the truth, integrity, sincerity, and honesty. To make amends, new legislation should be instigated that respects the rights of ethnic minorities, so that the Donbas region doesn't follow the Crimean route to secession. If Ukraine establishes a genuinely democratic rights-respecting government accepting pluralism and identity differences, it is less likely that people will want to leave it. Wherever there are extremists, separatists emerge.
The attitude of intolerance and polarization that followed Maidan revolution, posed a threat to the Russian ethnic minority and was detrimental in the country with diverse political cultures and orientations.
For instance, violating the linguistic rights of ethnic minorities, and above all fining “illegal” use of the Russian language as the Ukrainian parliamentarians’ bill proposed in 2017 is unacceptable and Ukraine should comply with international laws in that regard, which mandates the rights of linguistic minorities to use their own language in legal, administrative, and judicial acts, language education, and media.
After the breakup of the USSR in 1991, Crimea stayed under Ukrainian control under certain conditions, which Ukraine has broken and therefore has no legal right over Crimea. After a referendum in January 1991, Crimea regained its status as the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In May 1992, the Crimean parliament declared Crimea independent. A few days later, the Ukrainian parliament annulled the Crimean Declaration of Independence. In June 1992, the parties reached a compromise, Crimea was given the status of an "Autonomous Republic"[+] in Ukraine and granted special economic status.
The 1992 Crimean constitution[+] allowed Crimea more self-governance, which was then revised over the years by the Ukrainian parliament, denying Crimea some initial rights. During the 1990s, Moscow and Kyiv disputed numerous times over the political status of Crimea[+], and to keep Crimea, Ukraine made certain commitments: to give up its nuclear weapons, to allow Crimea to run its own affairs as it had in the past, and that Russia could maintain its use of the port as a navy base until 2042. But with the illegal, revolutionary change of the Ukrainian government from Pro-Russian to Pro-Europe in 2014, the Ukrainian government broke the agreement to allow Crimea to be self-governing and was going to force Russia to close its base earlier than negotiated. So, when Ukraine breached the agreement, the Russians and Crimeans didn't consent to that, so in a referendum, Crimeans decided to align themselves with Russia so as to be able to run their own affairs as in the past under Russian rule.
The Crimean Peninsula was granted territorial autonomy within an otherwise unitary Ukrainian state. Over the years, there were issues of a lack of power-sharing, insufficient protection, Ukrainian state fragility, and opposing identity narratives.
Ukrainian regime abolished much of the aspects of Crimea's autonomy[+], which the province enjoyed during the time of the Soviet Union. Naturally, some factions then grew separatist tendencies and advocated higher levels of autonomy for the peninsula.
In conclusion, Crimea was historically Russian for almost 200 years, as unlike Ukrainians, Russians fought for it on numerous occasions throughout history to keep it (they even gave up Alaska due to losses over fighting for Crimea in the mid-19th century), it was given to Ukraine under the presumption Ukraine would forever stay with Russia but when this was not the case it was taken back with the consent of the Crimean majority and only because Ukraine broke the 1991 agreement and several 1990s treaties. Ukraine is right to be unhappy about that but considering everything, including history, the ethnic majority there and their political influence on the Ukrainian government, as well as a costly economic disaster there, and especially considering the urgent necessity for ceasefire and peace, Ukraine is advised to renounce possessiveness and pay the price of giving up Crimea, as a noble act.
All that said, we wish to conclude this segment by drawing attention to a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn[+] from 1978, which is so illuminating that might pacify all those who still cling to the “international law theme” as they see it fit:
People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law. Any conflict is solved according to the letter of the law, and this is considered to be the supreme solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required… Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames. A society that is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very small advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses. And it will be, simply, impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.
Thank you for reading this article and participating in this peace initiative by raising your awareness and, hopefully, your consciousness and spirit. To properly grasp everything, we[*]recommend reading the articles of this peace initiative for Ukraine in the proper order, which is listed in the Contents. So if you haven’t read the previous articles, we recommend that you do. When you are ready, please proceed to the next article in this “Meeting the Demands for Ending the War” segment: Causation of the Crimean Annexation
Donbas[+] is a coal mining region that was part of eastern Ukraine from 1922-2022 (now part of Russia) consisting of two Republics - Donetsk and Luhansk - where most residents have been Russians for centuries. In 2022, after Bolsheviks defeated the Ukrainian nationalists, Lenin gave that part of former Russian Empire with mostly ethnic Russian residents to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine under condition that it remains part of the Soviet Union and under Moscow governance (Kyiv administration) but in 1991, Ukraine violated that agreement by breaking off from the Soviet Union and from Moscow, and since 2014, Ukrainians had been demolishing all Lenin's monuments, therefore they have no rights to claim the territories he conditionally granted them. Since Ukrainians hate Lenin and Stalin so much that they demonize them, then in the Russian view[+], it is only fair to give back all the land[ꚛ] that Lenin and Stalin allocated to Soviet Ukraine, without even asking the locals’ permission (the majority were Russians in Donbas).
Why did the US insist so much on Kosovo independence from Russia’s ally Serbia in 2008? Americans backed the Kosovo’s independence because it wanted to weaken a Russia’s ally and because the US or NATO uses Kosovo as its anti-Russian military base in the region as they built the largest NATO base in Europe there in 1999. Camp Bondsteel is the largest and the most expensive foreign military base built by the US in Europe since the Vietnam War. It serves as the headquarters for Multinational Task Force East (MNTF-E) led by the US army. The MNTF-E is part of the Kosovo Force (KFOR), Nato's “peacekeeping” force.
Americans pushed for the Kosovo’s independence for four other reasons: to receive amnesty of crimes during NATO bombings of Serbia by forcing Serbia to recognize Kosovo’s independence, bilateral legalization of Camp Bondsteel in a friendly milieu, settling the Islamic world with support to their communities in the Balkans, and forcing Russia out of the Balkans.
we refer to Kyiv as a regime[+] due to its oppressive and repressive policies, corruption, and foul treatment of its ethnic minorities, such as the ethnic Russians, violating their human rights, tyrannizing, and killing them since 2014.
![[+]](https://www.virtuology.biz/images/consciousness-scale.png){kind=link}
![[ꚛ]](https://img.dni.ru/binaries/v3_illustration/1395928.jpg){kind=link}
![[ꚛ]](https://bigthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Cropped-Ukraine.png){kind=link}
