For those of you who don’t know, a couple of days ago, Russia celebrated the 3rd anniversary of getting back the Crimea, which was essentially annexation. Evgeny Kiselev, a famous Russian journalist who later got the Ukrainian citizenship, decided to comment on the results of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea that took place 3 years ago.
Up until March 2014, the Crimea used to be a republic and a part of Ukraine. By the way, back then Moscow recognized that the Crimea was a Ukrainian peninsula, which was backed by the corresponding agreement between Moscow and Kiev. Mr. Kiselev confessed that he had almost nothing new to tell about this annexation. That’s why he said the same he had been saying all the time since March 2014. He is aware of the fact that his standpoint doesn’t correspond to Moscow’s standpoint, even when it comes to the political opposition.
Russian opposing political forces prefer not to show any clear stance on the Crimea issue. Few of them actually dare mention the annexation and the necessity to restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine. As for Mr. Kiselev, he says that they can celebrate this anniversary for ages, but this is still not going to change the essence of who happened 3 years ago.
The essence is simple. This was a military operation led by President Putin. By the way, later on, he confessed that he was leading the operation to occupy the Crimea, Mr. Kiselev says. The so-called referendum to join Russia was just nothing but an attempt to throw sand into the eyes of international observers.
This is why no countries around the globe have still recognized the Crimea as a Russian territory. On top of that, the Western world decided to impose sanctions on Russia because of its aggressive actions. At this point, nobody is going to cancel those sanctions despite multiple optimistic predictions made by local analysts.
A couple of month ago, Russia was welcoming Trump’s victory in the latest presidential election in the United States, along with hoping to make friends with the USA and getting rid of those sanctions thanks to a new friend. However, as we know, the plan has failed so far.
A couple of weeks after moving to the White House, Donald Trump decided to change his mind and urged Russia to cut down on its nuclear arsenal along with giving the Crimea and Donbass back to Russia in order to get those sanctions canceled. But Russia wont’ listen and is celebrating the 3rd anniversary of the Crimean annexation.
That’s why more and more international experts say that Russia is sick because they are celebrating something that the rest of the world sees as a crime. Simply put, Russia is proud of something that’s condemned by the rest of the world. Anyway, Mr. Kiselev believes that Putin’s regime will collapse, and the consequences may be even worse than those following the disintegration of the USSR more than 25 years ago. And he also believes that Crimea will eventually become a Ukrainian territory once again.
