Face It: We’ve Lost Crimea
Posted: 17/03/2014 | Author: The Political Idealist | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Conflict, crimea, democracy, Europe, Obama, Politics, putin, Russia, ukraine, world news |Leave a commentThe peninsula of Crimea held its rushed referendum yesterday. Voters in the Russian-occupied territory were asked to choose between joining the Russian Federation or a greater degree of autonomy for the devolved government. 93% of them voted for annexation by Russia.
Although the majority of Crimeans opposed to the annexation stayed at home, encouraged by the Ukrainian government, the EU and the US, who declared the ballot illegal, it was clear that the majority of Crimeans, mainly those of Russian descent, genuinely did favour annexation. Even when the questionable practices with ballot boxes that characterise elections (those in which Vladimir Putin is involved, anyway) are accounted for. Crimea wants to be part of the Russian Federation, and that is what its government is formally applying for today.
The reality is that, with a popular mandate from the Crimean people and unrivalled military forces in place, there is zero probability that the Ukranian government can hold on to the territory. Barack Obama achieves nothing by saying that the result will “never be recognised”: Russia doesn’t care if the West declares Crimea to be part of a federated republic with Swaziland; you cannot, in practice, ignore the situation on the ground.
This is not to say that Ukraine should be abandoned by the West: it needs all the help it can get if it is not to have its eastern provinces hived off by Russia in a similar manner to Crimea. My point is: our governments have missed the boat on Crimea. Today, European ministers are holding an emergency meeting to plan trade sanctions and asset freezes on Russia. Why did they not do this the second Russian military boots touched Ukrainian soil? Why not sanction Russia when its intention to annex Crimea became clear, rather than wait for the predictable outcome of a referendum we don’t recognise? There is no discernable thread of logic running through the actions of the EU-US bloc.
It is this intellectual wooliness that threatens to leave the fragile liberalism developing in Ukraine completely undefended. And the democrats, Tartars and minorities in Crimea who will pay for that have every right to blame us.
