The roots of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s annexation of Crimea 10 years ago

On March 18, 2014, Vladimir Putin signed the decree which formalized the annexation – illegal under international law – of Crimea by Russia. The rapid and bloodless seizure of the peninsula, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet and a popular vacation spot, has sparked a wave of nationalism. “Crimea is ours” has become a popular slogan in Russia.

Now that Vladimir Putin has been elected president for another six-year term, he is determined to extend his gains in Ukraine, galvanized by Russia’s successes on the battlefield and declining Western support for Kyiv.

Vladimir Putin has remained vague about how much of Ukraine he wants as fighting enters its third year at the cost of many lives on both sides, but some of his top lieutenants still talk of seize Kyiv and cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.

The biggest conflict in Europe since World War II has raised tensions between Moscow and the West to levels rarely seen even during the coldest moments of the Cold War.

Russian past

When he seized Crimea in 2014, Vladimir Putin declared that he had persuaded Western leaders to back down by reminding them of Moscow’s nuclear capabilities. A threat often brandished, notably after the start of his large-scale invasion of Ukraine, in his state of the nation address last month, when he declared that the West risked nuclear war if it was getting more involved in Ukraine, and again on Wednesday, when he said he would use that arsenal if Russia’s sovereignty was threatened.

The head of the Kremlin regularly presents the conflict in Ukraine as an existential fight between Russia and the West. An argument launched ten years ago when he declared that Moscow must then protect the Russian speakers of Crimea and recover its territory.

When Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin president was toppled in 2014 by mass protests that Moscow called a U.S.-instigated coup, Mr. Putin responded by sending troops to invade Crimea. During a mock vote, deputies elected Sergei Axionov, leader of a microparty favorable to Moscow, as Prime Minister. The latter requests its attachment to Russia. On March 16, 2014, a self-determination referendum was organized. Without any international observer being able to ensure good voting conditions and while the region was militarily occupied, the vote received 96.8% of votes in favor of joining Russia.

The Kremlin also uses history to support its argument. Ceded to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic (then a member of the USSR) by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, Crimea has been an integral part of Ukraine since its independence in 1991. But the peninsula’s Russian past – conquered by the empress Catherine II in 1783 – served as justification for Vladimir Putin.

Russia annexed Crimea on March 18, 2014, although the operation was only internationally recognized by countries such as North Korea and Sudan.

“Little Green Men”

Weeks later, Moscow-backed separatists launched an uprising in eastern Ukraine, clashing with forces from Kyiv. The Kremlin has denied supporting the rebellion with troops and weapons, despite ample evidence to the contrary, including a Dutch court’s finding that a Russian-supplied air defense system shot down a Malaysian airliner. Airlines over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, killing all 298 people on board.

Russian hardliners later criticized Putin for failing to seize all of Ukraine that year, arguing that it was easily possible at a time when the government in Kyiv was in in complete disarray and his army in tatters.

Instead, Putin supported the separatists and opted for a peace deal for eastern Ukraine that he hoped would allow Moscow to establish control over its neighbor. The 2015 Minsk agreement, negotiated by France and Germany following painful defeats by Ukrainian forces, required Kyiv to offer separatist regions broad autonomy, including permission to form their own police force. .

If fully implemented, the deal would have allowed Moscow to use the breakaway regions to dictate Kyiv’s policies and prevent it from joining NATO. Many Ukrainians viewed the deal as a betrayal of their national interests.

Russia saw the election of political novice Volodymyr Zelensky as president in 2019 as a chance to revive the anemic Minsk agreement. But Zelensky stuck to his guns, leaving the deal deadlocked and Putin increasingly exasperated.

Full-scale invasion of Ukraine

When Putin announced his “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he hoped that the country would fall as quickly and easily as Crimea. But the attempt to take Kyiv collapsed in the face of strong Ukrainian resistance, forcing Russian troops to withdraw from the outskirts of the capital.

Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter before leaving Russia, observed that the rapid and bloodless annexation of the peninsula “played a cruel trick“to Putin, who thought the 2022 invasion”would be something like the history of Crimea, but on a much larger scale“.

Further defeats followed in the fall of 2022, when Russian troops withdrew from much of eastern and southern Ukraine following a rapid counter-offensive by Kyiv.

The situation changed last year, when another Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to cut off Russia’s land corridor to Crimea. Kyiv’s forces suffered heavy losses during their failed attempts to break through Russian defenses on several levels.

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As Western support for Ukraine waned due to political wrangling in the United States and Kyiv lacked arms and ammunition, Russian troops stepped up pressure along the more than 1,000-kilometer front line. , relying on hundreds of thousands of volunteer troops and newly delivered weapons that replaced initial losses. Hesitant support from the West has put Ukraine in an increasingly precarious position, analysts say.

Crimea, Kyiv’s objective

A time away from the fighting, Crimea was overtaken by war in the summer of 2022. A first attack hit the military airfield in the town of Saky on August 9, reminding tourists of the reality of war .

In 2023, the Ukrainian army carried out no less than 184 strikes on the peninsula, the most resounding of which were the attack on the Kerch bridge on July 17 and the bombing of the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol.

In Crimea, the “yellow ribbons” movement showed that not all residents were in favor of a Russian occupation as the Kremlin wanted people to believe.

For Kyiv, the reconquest of Crimea is non-negotiable. “Russian aggression against Ukraine began in Crimea and must end in Crimea“, proclaims Volodymyr Zelensky. The withdrawal of Russian troops from all occupied territories remains the intangible prerequisite set by Kyiv to initiate talks with Moscow.

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