The Russian president emphasized that, nine years ago, the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol took a “definitive and unequivocal historical decision: to be part of a great and unique country again and forever.” On March 18, 2014, Vladimir Putin signed the annexation treaty of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and the port city of Sevastopol, after two separate referendums in which the residents of Crimea supported its incorporation into Russia by 96.77% and those from the port city of Sevastopol, considered a city with federal status, in the proportion of 95.6%. Their incorporation into Russia was sealed three days later, according to EFE. In the large-scale military campaign that Putin launched on February 24, Russia managed to create a land corridor between the Donbas in eastern Ukraine and Crimea in the south, which needs hydrological, energy, and agricultural resources from southern Ukraine to survive. With the illegal annexation last September of the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk (east), Zaporozhye, and Kherson (south), Russia turned the Sea of Azov into an inland sea, which ensures the security of Crimea and also created a line of fortifications. However, in the last 13 months since the start of the Russian invasion, Crimea has been the target of at least two attacks, which were attributed by Moscow to the Ukrainians. In August 2022, the peninsula was the scene of a sabotage operation against a Russian military arsenal and suspicious explosions at a Russian airfield. In October, the bridge over the Kerch Strait, which connects Crimea to Russia and is Putin’s “jewel in the crown”, was badly damaged by a car bomb attack attributed by Moscow to Ukraine. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Husnulin said on Friday that, soon, small trucks will be able to travel on the road side of the bridge, and the second railway line is to be reopened by July 1. The two car lanes have already been reopened. Ukraine has not stopped declaring that sooner or later it will liberate the occupied territory. From 2020, Kyiv will mark the Day of Resistance to the Occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol on February 26, the date on which the largest demonstration in support of the integrity and unity of the Ukrainian state took place in 2014 in Simferopol, the administrative center of the peninsula. In August 2021, Ukraine launched the Crimea Platform in an attempt to attract international support for the recovery of the peninsula, which in the previous year called on Russia to immediately end hostilities and withdraw its troops from the occupied territories in Ukraine.

By Cora Sulleyman