For more than ten years in the heart of the conflict between Moscow and kyiv, Donald Trump has returned to Crimea to the scene. Washington expects Ukraine to resign to recover this territory, attached by Russia in 2014, to negotiate a peace plan with Vladimir Putin.
If after his discussion in Head on the Beleys of Pope Francis’s funeral on Saturday, the US president said he believes that Volodomyr Zelensky is ready to draw a line on this strategic peninsula, the Ukrainian President has rejected this hypothesis so far.
• A territory attached by Russia in 2014
Crimea is a peninsula of 27,000 km² south of Ukraine, which has been a geostrategic node for 2,000 years. It was first annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783 after being a territory of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1921, the Peninsula was integrated into the USSR. It was in 1954 that he left under Ukrainian control. That year, in a symbolic gesture, the head of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, offered Crimea to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, integrated into the USSR.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine, which has become independent, made this territory to the strong Russian population that speaks Russian an autonomous region.
In 2014, the situation changed. The viktor Pro -Rusiano de Ukranian Iianaukovitch, which blocked the association agreement between kyiv and the European Union, is dismissed, pushed outside by the Pro -europeo.
Pique to The Heart, Vladimir Putin ordered his soldiers on February 27 to take over several strategic places in Crimea, including the Parliament and the airport of the regional capital, Simpheropol. After a referendum with a nebulous course, Moscow proclaims the annexation of Crimea.
An annexation that has not been recognized by the international community and that since then has earned many sanctions by Europe or the United States.
• A strategic peninsula
Crimea, now played by two war countries, is a highly strategic territory. It allows control over the black sea and the small sea of Azov, as well as the commercial roads that cross them. When Crimea Annexar, Moscow has annexed a large maritime space, a large exclusive economic area, where there are about forty hydrocarbon deposits.
If this peninsula was before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a tourist destination with the beaches and precious vacation places, it has become very militarized. She is like “an immense carrier of aircraft attached to Ukraine”, image with challenges, American historian and journalist Anna Appelbaum.
The port of Sébastapol is home to the important Russian fleet: attack submarines, frigates, hunters, missiles … It is from this territory, linked to Ukraine by a small arm, which Moscow orchestra all its military operations carried out in southern Ukraine. It serves as a rear base for the Russian forces: from there there are reinforcements sent and the maintenance of the devices is managed there.
Ukraine has carried out many attacks in air bases or Crimea fuel deposits in response to the February Russian invasion of 2022. Russian submarines and ships were attacked in the Black Sea.
Without having claimed them, kyiv is also responsible for two attacks on the Kerch symbolic bridge. An attack against the car trapped in October 2022 and Attack of Drones in July 2023. Inaugurated in 2018, four years after the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Moscow, the bridge connects the annexed territory with the Tamana region in southern Russia. It is the region’s attachment symbol to Moscow, and on the contrary, a provocation for the kyiv regime.
On March 25, the United States announced that it had agreed with Russia and Ukraine a truce in the Black Sea with the reactivation of an agreement that allows commercial navigation and exports of Ukrainian agricultural products. However, the contours of this truce are still very uncertain.
• A highly symbolic territory
Beyond its strategic importance, Vladimir Putin made Crimea a symbol of conquering Russian power. For Kyiv, it is a symbol of sovereignty and an important political objective. In the eyes of Ukraine, Crimea is the Alfa and the Omega of the War with Russia that began in his eyes more than ten years ago.
In August 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky said that “the war in Ukraine began with Crimea and had to end his release.” Since then, he continues to hammer his desire to recover it. On April 23, the Ukrainian President repeated that Crimea was “his territory.”
“Today, on the Ukrainian side, it is clear that there are no necessary forces to free Crimea. But recognizing its annexation would return in my opinion to open Pandora’s box,” explains Oksana Mitrofanova, a research teacher at Ukraine in Unalco and Doctor of Political Science, in political sciences, in 20 minutes.
“This would create a legal precedent that could open the way to an annexation of Russia of the four regions that are currently occupied in part,” he abounds.
This is what the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, asked this Monday, April 28. The recognition of the international community of the Russian annexation of Crimea and other Ukrainian regions that were attached in 2022, while the Kremlin said that its part was ready for the “without pre -prequisite” discussions.
Restricting Ukraine to recognize Russian sovereignty on Crimea would contravene the principles that found the international order established with the creation of the United Nations according to experts.
It would be “the return of the right of the conquest,” considers Elie Tenenbaum, of the French Institute of International Relations (Iffiri), interviewed by the France-Presse agency. “The message that this sends is that it can be paying, at least for the great powers, violating this prohibition of the use of force,” adds Lauri Mälksooo, professor at the University of Tartu in Estoni.
When Michel Eperling, professor at the Max-Plant Institute in Frankfurt in Germany, believes that “such an precedent could be” extremely destabilizing consequences, including catastrophic, for world peace. “
Source: BFM TV
