The Reunification of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol with the Russian Federation: Logic Dictating Borders

Abstract

Crimea and the City of Sevastopol justifiably separated from Ukraine and reunified with the Russian Federation in 2014. Support for this proposition is found in historic, economic, and political reasoning. Extant principles of public international law, derived from the Treaty of Westphalia, and subsequently developed by Great Powers to facilitate their strategic interests, when applied to the Crimean/Russian reunification, produce absurd results: nailing a population to a cross of misery, oppression, and poverty. In addition, the principles invoked are underdeveloped, prejudiced toward Nation States holding the imprimatur of “Great Powers”, and ignore individual and population preferences. Moreover, scholarly and jurist analyses repose upon an edifice of incomplete facts, and ignore the 1991 illegal annexation of Crimea by Ukraine. Crimea suffered twenty-three years of economic rot under Ukrainian rule. Under the Russian Federation, economic conditions in the peninsula are improving, despite the US/EU sanctions imposed upon the Crimean population, a cruelty that the Great Powers cannot justify. Exceptional circumstances that took place in Ukraine in 2013/14 permitted scheduling a referendum to seek independence from Ukraine. Polls taken after the 2014 referendum unanimously demonstrate that the population of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol prefer reunification with the Russian Federation, as opposed to going back and becoming a subject of Ukraine rule and exploitation under a US installed right wing regime. Repeated calls to “give back” Crimea to Ukraine are based on twisted historical narratives, solely designed to weaken the Russian Federation.