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Successful Accession of Crimea to Russia Essay

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The crisis in Ukraine and Crimea’s recent accession to Russia are events that clearly highlight the underlying sources of conflict in global politics. While Russia sees its actions in Crimea as a “reunification” and the respect for the right of self-determination, the West views it as a threat to European security and a violation of territorial integrity. Crimea has been a debatable topic from the time it came under the control of the Russian Empire in 1783 during the reign of Catherine the Great. The justification then was similar to the reasoning being used by Vladimir Putin today. Catherine declared that she was protecting ethnic Russians in the region from the Ottoman Empire, much as Putin is claiming to protect Russians from Ukrainian …show more content…

The collapse of the Union resulted in Crimea becoming a part of Independent Ukraine. The independent status was supported by a referendum in all regions of Ukrainian SSR, including Crimea. Crimea had the advantage of formally being a part of Ukraine and at the same time possessing a high level of regional autonomy, having its own legislative body and constitution. With the end the Yanukovych government in 1992, Crimea named its own Prime Minister.
Russia also pledged to uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine and Crimea by signing the Budapest memorandum on the 5th of December 1994, providing for Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. One of the provisions of the memorandum was an assurance against threat or actual use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine. In March 1995, however, the parliament of Ukraine intervened and scrapped the Crimean Constitution removing Meshkov, along with his office, given his pro-Russian tendencies.
While the Crimean question remained subdued for a long time, in September 2008 it was brought back into the forefront of global politics when the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko accused Russia of giving out Russian passports to the population in the Crimea and described it as a "real problem" given Russia's declared policy of military intervention abroad to protect Russian citizens.
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