Crimea: Between History and Propaganda

“Ukraine cannot afford to lose tens of thousands of lives to regain Crimea, but the peninsula can be regained through diplomacy,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Fox News on November 20.

These words represent a very significant change of course for Kiev, given the crucial importance of Crimea in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Moscow’s annexation of this region in March 2014 – after a legally contested referendum but with a very clear result – was in fact fundamental to deepening Russia’s rift with Ukraine and “the West.” It was then that Russia got kicked out of the G8 and subjected to severe economic sanctions, albeit less than those subsequently imposed in 2022.

The annexation of the region was perceived by the vast majority of Russians as reparation for the historical injustice, resulting from Khrushchev’s 1954 transfer of the region to Ukraine, and proof of Russia’s newfound political centrality in the international situation. In the following months, Putin’s popularity reached 89%, the highest ever.

Since the annexation, Moscow has allocated significant funds to Crimea, particularly to address its fundamental problems, starting with the lack of land links to Russia. Great emphasis from this standpoint was placed on the rapid construction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait, which opened to traffic in May 2018 and equipped with a rail link the following year. Crimea has also assumed a very important role in Russia’s strategy, which has significantly strengthened the Black Sea Fleet, expanded the Sevastopol base, and stationed on the peninsula an aviation division, modern radar systems, and the latest generation of missile complexes. The possession of the peninsula has indeed significantly strengthened Russia’s position in the Black Sea, which is seen as a territory within its sphere of influence. In fact, Crimea should be framed as a broader projection of Moscow’s power to the Black Sea – Mediterranean region, where Russia has deployed other military structures, notably Gudauta in Abkhazia and Tartus in Syria, also seeking to establish another one in Libya with the backing of Gen. Haftar.

Moreover, in recent years, Moscow has deployed significant ground forces in Crimea, which have played a very important role in the intervention in Ukraine, moving toward Mariupol in the east and Kherson in the north. However, during the war, Crimea proved to be very vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks with missiles and drones of various types. Russian bases were hit hard, as was the Kerch Bridge. Above all, the fleet suffered heavy blows and was forced to withdraw toward more distant ports, particularly Novorossiysk. Ukrainian and Western analysts have insisted much on this vulnerability, even exaggerating its extent. If it is true that Crimea now seems less important on a strategic level to the Kremlin than it was before the war, its military conquest by Kiev is hard to imagine, given Moscow’s clear land military superiority.

Moreover, at the same time, this region fully retains its deep historical and cultural value for Russia. Crimea was actually the territory in which Russia’s imperial dimension was emphasized most prominently. Since its conquest in 1783, during the time of Catherine the Great, Crimea has played an extremely important role in Russian culture, giving rise to a real “Crimean myth.”

Through the conquest of Crimea, which belonged, albeit marginally, to ancient Greece, Russia could actually credibly assert its new cultural and political role as a European country. Moreover, according to Russian medieval chronicles, it was in Crimea, in the ancient city of Chersonese, located near present-day Sevastopol, that Grand Duke Vladimir of Kiev adopted Christianity, thus beginning the conversion of the country to the new religion.

Subsequently, characterized by magnificent Mediterranean nature, among other things, Crimea became a central site of the Russian cultural imagination, where Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and many other writers and artists participated to varying degrees. It is no coincidence that Crimea was called “the pearl of the empire,” thus occupying a completely unique position in the Russian cultural context. The significance persisted both in Soviet times, despite the controversial transfer of the region to Ukraine in 1954, and in post-Soviet times. The same obviously cannot be said of Ukrainian culture, in which Crimea plays a distinctly secondary role.

Adding to the fundamental cultural aspect is the extremely important fact that approximately 68% of Crimea’s population is Russian, far exceeding the local Ukrainian (15%) and Tatar (10%) communities. These strategic, demographic, and cultural aspects make Crimea the most indispensable region in the territories occupied by Russia from 2014 to today. Probably even more than Donbass, which also has very significant mineral resources. All this makes Zelensky’s words about Ukraine’s ability to regain Crimea through diplomatic channels very unconvincing.

In fact, if the war continues at a pace favorable to Moscow, which is the way it has been characterized for more than a year, it is very likely that at its end the peninsula will be connected to the Russian Federation not only by the Kerch Bridge, but also by the coastal strip acquired militarily during the conflict. In all likelihood, this will happen in the absence of legal recognition by Ukraine and the Western countries that support it, but at present it is objectively difficult to foresee Crimea’s future outside of Russia.