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- cross-posted to:
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Traffic on the single bridge that links Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea and serves as a key supply route for the Kremlin’s forces in the war with Ukraine came to a standstill on Monday after one of its sections was blown up, killing a couple and wounding their daughter.
The RBC Ukraine news agency reported that explosions were heard on the bridge, with Russian military bloggers reporting two strikes.
RBC Ukraine and another Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda said the attack was planned jointly by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian navy, and involved sea drones.
As others have pointed out, Crimea is not 82% Russian. The majority of the populace speaks Russian, but a shared language does not indicate a shared culture. They don’t want to be part of Russia, and were illegally invaded.
Crimea wasn’t “invaded”. Russia was already there as it leased the port and officially managed it for military use already. That’s why there was no fighting. They already ran the checkpoints, they already were the entire military presence in the region. The changeover from “this is Ukraine” to “this is Russia now” was entirely the signing of papers and changed absolutely nothing about the presence in the region or the average day to day. They certainly took it over, but to say it was invaded is somewhat misleading, more of a “we’ve decided that this is ours now”.
This is a gross and flagrant distortion of events in Crimea leading up to the illegal annexation. It leaves out the fact that the operation of the checkpoints was still subject to Ukrainian governmental oversight, the fact that prior to the take-over, Russia illegally brought soldiers in unmarked uniforms over the border (the “little green men”), and the fact that the “changeover” was far from violence-free, let alone just a “signing of papers.”
The denial of reality going on here is absurd. Pre 2014 I know they operated the checkpoints because I went to Crimea for 2 weeks in 2009. I’m not saying that there wasn’t also fuckery involved but denying the reality of events is nonsensical. There is even a vice documentary that shows just how casual the transition was. It’s extremely painful discussing these topics with people online whose only understanding of these regions comes through the lens of this war.
I never said Russia didn’t operate the checkpoints. But prior to 2014, Crimea was indisputably Ukrainian territory, and Russia operated security checkpoints inside Ukraine at Ukraine’s discretion.
No one is claiming that the annexation of Crimea involved violence at the scale of the current war, but it was not non-violent, either. Characterizing it as just “signing of papers” is false.
What other lens should we look at the annexation through? It was clearly the early stages of this war.
I’m not saying it wasn’t Ukrainian territory. I’m saying that the presence there was 100% russian military because it was functionally operated as their military port.
This is precisely why there was no battle over it, no deaths, no nothing. Just “this is russia now” and continued operation of it as they always had but with different flags.
I’d much prefer a non-war lens of the place and how cool it is. Most people in america hadn’t even heard of it until the annexation, it’s very unfortunate.
I don’t think calling it the early stages of this war is quite accurate but it’s not really that important and kinda gets into unnecessary semantics. The war probably wouldn’t be happening if the Minsk agreement had been kept. Russia were never going to let Crimea go because they needed it as a military port but they avoided Donetsk and Luhansk up until the Minsk agreement failed. If they had taken these regions in 2014 it would have been a breeze for them as Ukraine had no military to speak of, which is why the civil war was fought by the nazi volunteer batallions (azov, right sector, etc etc). Ukraine’s military was ramped up between 2014 and 2021. They did not really have much of anything until the 2016 Stategic Defense Bulletin followed by the State Program for the Development of the Armed Forces (2017-2020). In 2014 the military was only 90k active personnel with over half being civilian staff.
We’d all prefer a non-war lens of Crimea. You’re right, it was a cool and interesting place, and hopefully still will be when the war is over.
But Russia has no say over whether another country’s territory will be used as Russia’s military port. The fact is, Ukraine was amenable to hosting Russia’s military there, so long as Russia didn’t try to actually own the land, but they’ve forfeited their right to use it now.
Ultimately, Russia’s military will be ousted from Crimea along with the rest of Ukraine, and that will be that. Had they never annexed it or escalated to open warfare, they would still be operating there freely today, with a much friendlier Ukraine happily hosting them.
I uhh. Don’t share your optimism or actually care who runs it, I only really care that the people I know there remain safe. For them and for myself the flag be waved around is somewhat meaningless compared to the human impact of all this nonsense, particularly because some of my socialist friends are gone now. With that said I don’t see Crimea changing hands again, nor does anyone I have spoken to currently in Crimea. I might change that assessment if the counteroffensive ever actually sees the first line of dragon’s teeth but so far it’s been completely underwhelming. Everyone also sees the deployment of clusterbombs as a “let’s salt the earth so it’s worthless to them” move rather than anything that will change the counteroffensive’s prospects.
There is an easy way to end the war: Russian withdrawal. It really is as simple as that.
At any point in history Russian Federation had no right or business to occupy any part of Ukraine. It was up to Ukraine to decide what to do with those areas.
While we all want the war to stop, it cannot be done at any price. Ukraine must be allowed to return the areas stolen from it and Russia must return to pre 2014 borders. Either they do it willingly or with force. No one likes it, but it’s Russia that chose to attack, not Ukraine.
I hope your friends are safe, but at the same time I hope they have the sense to leave Crimea until things settle.
And let’s hope for peace, but recognize that it cannot be achieved by giving into the offender’s demands.
Russia chose all of this.
No one else. Russia.