[Travis McGee]

I don’t support Russia. I don’t like Putin. Stalin murdered millions of Ukrainians, and they are right to hate and fear Russia. That said, the kindergarten-level of reporting on Crimea is not helpful.

The Crimea is Russia’s REAL “red line.” (Note I said Crimea, not Ukraine.)

Crimea was part of Russia for over 200 years, since the 1780s, until Nikita Khrushchev literally gifted it to Ukraine in 1954 in order to purchase the support of their party bosses during his accession after the death of Stalin.

Before Russia, it belonged to the Ottoman Empire, now defunct. Before that, it belonged to the city-state of Venice, going back to before Columbus discovered America. But the Crimea was NEVER part of Ukraine, until Khrushchev’s unilateral “gift.”

(Imagine if President Eisenhower, as a dictator on his own, gave Long Island and NYC to Connecticut as part of an internal United States political deal to secure CT’s critically needed support during a contested election or coup. That is how Crimea became part of the Ukraine.)

In 1954, the political gift of the Crimea was an internal USSR matter, not an international matter. Ukraine was then the Ukraine SSR, within the USSR. In 1991, the USSR broke apart, and Khrushchev’s personal gift suddenly mattered. But despite the gift and the fluke that led Crimea to become part of the modern sovereign nation of Ukraine, Crimea has always been 90%+ ethnic Russian, and as always, it contains Russia’s most critical naval bases, air force bases and sea ports.

In fact, Crimea is far more Russian than Hawaii is American. It’s foolish and naïve to believe that the Russians will risk losing the Crimea during a period of chaos in greater Ukraine.

If you want to see Russia’s REAL “red line,” threaten their control of the Crimea, and its naval bases and seaports. I’m not supporting Russia’s position, I just want folks to know that this is a much more complicated picture than “Evil Russia invades poor innocent Ukraine,” which is the kindergarten/MSM version of Crimean history.

[frogjerk]

Thanks for the background

Also, with Russia doing this land grab at precisely the wrong time doesn't really help the precarious situation at all. Kind of like taking money out of your friends wallet he owes you when he is incapacitated or being mugged. Very slimy.

[fishtank]

Thanks for the post.

This whole Ukraine thing is just the latest chapter in Susan Rice’s “______fill in the blank_____ Spring”......

[henkster]

It was also primarily populated by the Crimean Tatars, who are in no way ethnically Russian. The Tatars made the unfortunate mistake of collaborating with the Germans when the Germans occupied the Crimea. Or at least they made Stalin believe they had. So the lot of them were deported and scattered through Central Asia (much as also happened to the Volga Germans and the Chechens). The peninsula was then populated by ethnic Russians.

I don’t believe Crimea has ever been ethnically Ukrainian.

[Marguerite]

When I was a kid, my father took us on a cruise on the Black Sea. We stopped at Yalta in Crimea, Sochi and Batumi, in Georgia.

While in Yalta, we visited the Livadia Palace (built for the tzar Nicolas II in 1911), where the Yalta Treaty was signed between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in 1945.

Yalta is incredibly beautiful, with a subtropical climate and the mountains which shoot up from the sea. And of course, EVERYBODY spoke Russian, which I speak too, studied it in school. I have wonderful souvenirs from that vacation.