After Yanukovych fled his country in February, thousands of Crimeans flooded the streets of their capital, Sevastopol, in protest against the new authorities in Kiev. More than 71 per cent of the 379,000 inhabitants of the city were ethnic Russian. Sevastopol had never previously had a mayor because a governor for the city was always appointed by the president of Ukraine who also fulfilled the role of mayor. Now thousands of protesters chanted that they wanted a Russian mayor for a Russian city. Protesters waved Russian flags and chanted ‘Putin is our president’. The next day more protesters rallied outside the Sevastopol administration offices. The pro-Russian rally chose Aleksei Chalyi, a Russian citizen, as their new mayor.
Rumours spread that the protesters in Crimea were in fact Russians who had been smuggled into the country during the weeks of protests in Kiev. On 26 February, media claimed that Russian troops or local volunteers had taken control of the main route of access to Sevastopol, creating a military checkpoint, with military vehicles under a Russian flag set up on the main highway. The next day the residents of Crimea woke up to find the Ukrainian flag over the regional parliament had been replaced by the Russian tricolour. Polite ‘little green men’ in military gear without insignia had in fact seized the Crimean parliament, raising the Russian flag. Apart from being well behaved, it was also claimed that they were professionals and heavily armed.
Although the parliament had been unlawfully seized, the Crimean prime minister, Anatoly Mogilev, said on a televised broadcast that the men who had taken over the building were not showing any signs of aggression, and he claimed that the situation was under control and that negotiations were underway to come to an agreement with the invaders.
Feeling compelled to become involved, the Crimean Tatars, an ethnic group that had originated in Turkey, now joined the protests against the Russian takeover. They, like the northern and western Ukrainians, were pro-Europe and had no affectionate memories of the Soviet Union. In May 1944, the entire Tatar population of Crimea was exiled to central Asia, mainly to Uzbekistan, on the orders of Joseph Stalin. They were deported as a form of collective punishment. The Tatars were not allowed to return to Crimea from exile until the beginning of Gorbachev’s perestroika in the mid-1980s. They did not want to answer or belong to a country that had treated them so terribly in the past; the democratic forces in Ukraine had always been able to count on the support of these people.
Many Tatars feared that a Russian takeover would leave their relatively small population—roughly 12 per cent of Crimea—subject to ethnic backlash and repression. So on 26 February 2014 about five thousand of them rushed to the city council building in Sevastopol in a show of support for the Euromaidan protests. They were met there by supporters of the pro-Russian party. In an effort to avoid provocation, the Tatars mainly pleaded for unity, for respect and for protecting churches, mosques and synagogues. There were scuffles, but nobody was seriously injured.
For twenty years different nationalities, religions and denominations had lived side by side in Crimea without any major conflicts. It was probably the only territory in the post-Soviet space that had been able to avoid that so far. But even though the Kremlin and the new Crimean government immediately expressed their strong sympathy for the Tatars’ concerns, the Tatars were in no way reassured; they had not forgotten their past and the atrocities they had suffered under Russian rule.
On the morning of 27 February, what were identified as Berkut units from Crimea and other regions of Ukraine seized checkpoints on the Isthmus of Perekop (the narrow strip of land linking the Crimean peninsula to mainland Ukraine) and on the Chonhar peninsula (another entry point to the region). It was reported that they were toting armoured personnel carriers, grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns and other weapons. From that moment on they controlled all traffic by land between Crimea and Ukraine.
Suddenly armed men were seen driving into the two airports in Crimea. In the early hours of 28 February, a group of armed men in military uniform without signs of identification seized Simferopol International Airport. Airport authorities later denied that it had been ‘captured’ and said that it was still operating normally, despite the continuing armed presence. Later in the day, Sevastopol International Airport was occupied in a similar manner as Simferopol’s airport.
There was still uncertainty as to the precise identity of the gunmen holding the parliament and the airports. They claimed to be part of an informal self-defence group that had sprung up in response to the revolution in Kiev. When asked, they said they were just volunteers helping to maintain order at the airport. But others doubted this. ‘This is not a ragtag force,’ said Brigadier Ben Barry, a specialist on land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. ‘When you see a new militia, they will have a jumble-sale look. This lot are uniformly dressed and equipped, and seem competent and efficient.’
There were no reports of looting and, although their behaviour seemed threatening, no civilian was attacked. In the days that followed, other groups appeared. These were genuine volunteers, who had come from Moscow to join what they saw as the liberation of Crimea.
After nine Russian-marked vehicles were spotted on the road between Sevastopol and Simferopol, Secretary of State Kerry said the US was watching to see if Russian activity ‘might be crossing a line in any way’ and had urged the Kremlin against action that might be misinterpreted as a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The Russian foreign ministry said movements of vehicles belonging to the Russian Black Sea Fleet were prompted by the need to ensure the security of its base in Sevastopol. Russia rebuffed calls from European leaders to withdraw troops from Crimea, saying the volunteer ‘self-defence’ forces were not under its command.
On 28 February, a missile boat of the Russian Federation blocked Balaklava harbour, where ships of the Ukrainian Sea Guard were stationed. For Russia these events ensured, for the time being, that Ukraine’s new government would not join NATO, and also that Kiev would not evict Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from its long-established base in Sevastopol.
Protests against the new authorities in Kiev and in support of the Russians in Crimea occurred throughout eastern and southern Ukraine on 1 March. The Crimean prime minister appealed directly to Putin in a signed statement officially calling for Russia to ‘provide assistance in ensuring peace and tranquillity on the territory’ of Crimea.
When Europe and the US protested against the ‘violent’ Russian land grab, Putin ridiculed the idea that events in Crimea amounted to Russian aggression. He said there had been no shots fired and no casualties listed during recent weeks: the outcome was what the vast majority of Russian-speakers in Crimea really wanted, and there was little need for Kalashnikovs in the streets. Within a week, Russian special operations troops had seized control of all strategic locations across Crimea, while the regional authorities moved to declare independence and schedule a referendum that would make it possible for the peninsula to become part of Russia again.
Russia vehemently denied any interest in expanding its hold within Ukraine. ‘Don’t believe those who say Russia will take other regions after Crimea. We don’t need that,’ Putin said. But Putin also said that Russia would always be ready to stand up for the rights of fellow Russians. He mentioned, seemingly in passing, that Russians in eastern Ukraine, in the cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk, had been subjected to the same sort of abuse at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists that he said had led him to act in Crimea. Putin said he was also reversing what he described as an ‘historic injustice’ inflicted by the Soviet Union sixty years ago. ‘After a difficult, long and exhausting journey, Crimea and Sevastopol have returned to Russia—to their home harbour, their home shores, their home port,’ he said.