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THE CRISIS IN UKRAINE AND RELATIONS BETWEEN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND RUSSIA
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threat to their identity and a rupture of the for-
mer fragile national equilibrium that left them
politically disenfranchised. Furthermore, on 23
February, the Rada abolished a law that had
made Russian an official language in certain re-
gions. Although Turchynov vetoed the resolu-
tion a few days later, the damage was already
done. The discontent of the Pro-Russian popula-
tion had been raised to the boiling point and
was ready to spill over.
The Crimean secession
Reaction in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea
was almost immediate. Pro-Russian protests
broke out on in Sevastopol on 23 February,
armed militias took over key border crossings and
other strategic points on the 26th, and on the
27th the Supreme Council, whose seat had been
stormed by armed self-defence forces, deposed
the prime minister appointed in Kyiv in favour of
Sergei Aksynov, leader of the Russian Unity party,
who had won only 4% of the vote in the 2010
regional elections and would ask Russian presi-
dent Vladimir Putin for assistance on 1 March.
The Council of the Federation, upper house of
the Russian Federal Assembly, authorised the in-
tervention of Russian forces in Ukraine on the
same day that Aksynov issued his appeal.
Russian troops stationed in Sevastopol,
where Russia was authorised to maintain up to
25,000 men, were deployed without badges
throughout the peninsula, occupied airports,
patrolled highways, and encircled Ukrainian
army barracks without engaging in combat. A
referendum on independence from Ukraine that
the Crimean Supreme Council had previously
announced would take place on 25 May was
moved up to 16 March. Over 80% of the elec-
torate turned out for the referendum, 96%
casting their votes in favour of secession. Crimea
and Sevastopol both declared their independ-
ence from Ukraine on the 17th and immediate-
ly sought accession to Russia. An admission
agreement was signed in Moscow the following
day and ratified by both houses of the Russian
Parliament on the 21st, after which Crimea be-
came an autonomous republic of Russia and
Sevastopol a Russian federal city.
Crimea had been part of Russia from 1783,
the year that Catherine the Great wrested it
from the Ottoman Empire, until 1954, when
Nikita Khrushchev presented it to Ukraine as a
gift in celebration of the 300th anniversary of its
unification with Russia. Of course, in 1954, no
one had asked the inhabitants of Crimea, 60%
of which are currently of Russian descent,
whether they were in favour of integration with
Ukraine or not. As it occurred at a time when
both Crimea and Ukraine were fully integrated
into to the USSR, the cession was of a mainly
administrative nature. In any case, the transfer
did not include Sevastopol, which due to its
military base had long before been given the
special status of a federal city under the direct
authority of Moscow, and as such was not con-
sidered to be part of the
oblast
(region) of
Crimea. After Ukraine gained its independence
in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, Crimea adopted its own constitution
and made an unsuccessful bid for independ-
ence in May 1992. Since another failed attempt
in 1994, it has had the status of autonomous
republic within Ukraine. Sevastopol also re-
mained under the administrative control of Kyiv
during the period that the division of the Black
Sea fleet and Russia’s maintenance of a military
base in that city were negotiated.
In 1992, the Supreme Soviet questioned the
constitutionality of Khrushchev’s transfer of
Crimean sovereignty to Ukraine, and demanded