Crimea: Russia’s Crime Against Peace and Humanity
In late February 2014, Russia committed a crime many thought unimaginable for the 21st century. While the world’s attention was on the closing of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, masked men in unmarked green uniforms began to infiltrate my country’s Crimean peninsula. These “Little Green Men,” as the world labelled them, were sent by the Kremlin with heavy arms in trucks with no numbers, wearing uniforms without insignia, to quietly and illegally occupy and annex territory that belongs to sovereign Ukraine.
This week marks the anniversary of the illegal occupation and annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol. Three years later, though Russia was punished with economic sanctions, the crime continues, and so does the suffering of our citizens. The Russian government thought it could upend the rules of the international order, unilaterally rewrite borders and intimidate citizens into coercion, but it was wrong. In our rules-based society, crimes are punished.
Despite reporting on the brokering of “grand deals” that would abandon Crimea to end Russian crimes against my country, sanctions remain, and Ukraine and its partners will continue to use all the tools available to us to protest Russia’s illegal actions. We do this in support not only of our territorial integrity and of a rules-based international society; we are supporting the 2.2 million Ukrainian citizens living on the peninsula who are denied a normal life under Russian occupation, as well as the more than 10,000 killed, 20,000 wounded, and two million internally displaced people who have suffered since the conflict began.
In committing its crime, Russia blatantly disregarded a rove of international laws and agreements to which it is a party by holding an illegal and illegitimate referendum on the peninsula in 2014. Among them is the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, to which both Russia and Ukraine are parties. The Act states that “participating States will refrain from any acts constituting a threat of force or direct or indirect use of force against another participating State.” Moreover, Russia broke security assurances to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for its nuclear weapons. Finally, and most importantly, the illegal annexation violated the United Nations Charter, which protects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of independent states.
Shortly after the illegal occupation and annexation, one hundred members of the United Nations affirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in Resolution General Assembly Resolution 68/262. This past December, the U.N. underscored its support in a resolution on the “Situation of human rights in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (Ukraine),” which condemned Russia’s crimes and for the first time called Russia by its rightful name: an occupying power.
The legal implications of Russia’s actions will have undeniable repercussions for the international order if left unchecked, but it is the human rights abuses that Russia commits in Crimea which weigh on me most heavily. I have written before about the Kremlin’s use of Ukrainian citizens in Crimea and beyond as political pawns, and about the repression of Crimean Tatars and ban of their parliament, the Mejlis. Russia intimidates, threatens, extrajudicially abducts, deports, and executes those who speak out against the occupying regime. It has outlawed Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian languages, cracked down on local media, and pressured religious and political leaders, forcing them to leave the peninsula. John Dalhuisen, Director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Programme said that these actions are “aimed at silencing their dissent and ensuring the submission of every person in Crimea to the annexation.”
Furthermore, Russia’s claims that no blood was shed when occupying the Ukrainian peninsula are not true; Ukrainian servicemen were killed as the crime was committed, and Crimean Tatar activist Reshat Ametov was kidnapped by pro-Russian paramilitary group “Crimean Self-Defense” and tortured to death. Despite the fact that in video evidence of his abduction, the faces of Ametov’s kidnappers are clearly visible, they remain unpunished. No progress has been made in establishing the fate of at least 20 Crimean Tatars who disappeared on the peninsula since the start of the illegal occupation. Our numerous requests to the Russian Federation for updates on these cases remain unanswered.
Three years after Russia’s crime, millions of Ukrainian citizens live in an atmosphere of impunity and fear. Every day, my colleagues and I at the Ukrainian Ministry for Foreign Affairs continue to use all of the outlets available to fight for the rights of its citizens in Crimea and to secure the reversal of the peninsula’s occupation and annexation. And our efforts do bear fruit: a number of landmark decisions and cases calling for an end to Russian aggression were passed in the UN General Assembly, the Council of Europe, and the OSCE. Last summer, after Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis Ilmi Umerov was forcibly sent to the Simferopol Psychiatric Hospital, where he spent three weeks without critical medications for diabetes and heart disease and was subjected to “punitive psychiatry,” pressure from the international community secured his release. He still faces criminal charges for “calling to violate the territorial integrity of Russia,” which we will rally against.
The support of international partners is integral in the success of these efforts. Just as the West never recognized the Soviet Union’s annexation of the Baltic States, our allies have refused to recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea and have maintained punishing sanctions on Russia for its actions. The position of the Ukrainian government and our partners has remained the same for three years: Crimea is and will remain a part of sovereign Ukraine.
The collective pressure that the international community continues places on the Russian Federation can have real impact. In the case of Crimea, our actions will save 2.2 million of my fellow Ukrainian citizens from the life of intimidation and terror that they have known for the past three years.
