Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea

As pro-Russian protesters became increasingly assertive in Crimea, groups of armed men whose uniforms lacked any clear identifying marks surrounded the airports in Simferopol and Sevastopol. Masked gunmen occupied the Crimean parliament building and raised a Russian flag, as pro-Russian lawmakers dismissed the sitting government and installed Sergey Aksyonov, the leader of the Russian Unity Party, as Crimea’s prime minister. Voice and data links between Crimea and Ukraine were severed, and Russian authorities acknowledged that they had moved troops into the region. Turchynov criticized the action as a provocation and a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, while Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin characterized it as an effort to protect Russian citizens and military assets in Crimea. Aksyonov declared that he, and not the government in Kyiv, was in command of Ukrainian police and military forces in Crimea.

On March 6 the Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, with a public referendum on the matter scheduled for March 16, 2014. The move was hailed by Russia and broadly condemned in the West. Meanwhile, Yatsenyuk affirmed Kyiv’s position that Crimea was an integral part of Ukraine. On the day of the referendum, observers noted numerous irregularities in the voting process, including the presence of armed men at polling stations, and the result was an overwhelming 97 percent in favour of joining Russia. The interim government in Kyiv rejected the result, and the United States and the EU imposed asset freezes and travel bans on numerous Russian officials and members of the Crimean parliament. On March 18 Putin met with Aksyonov and other regional representatives and signed a treaty incorporating Crimea into the Russian Federation. Western governments protested the move. Within hours of the treaty’s signing, a Ukrainian soldier was killed when masked gunmen stormed a Ukrainian military base outside Simferopol. Russian troops moved to occupy bases throughout the peninsula, including Ukrainian naval headquarters in Sevastopol, as Ukraine initiated the evacuation of some 25,000 military personnel and their families from Crimea. On March 21 after the ratification of the annexation treaty by the Russian parliament, Putin signed a law formally integrating Crimea into Russia.

As international attention remained focused on Crimea, Yatsenyuk negotiated with the IMF to craft a bailout package that would address Ukraine’s $35 billion in unmet financial obligations. He also met with EU officials in Brussels, and on March 21 Yatsenyuk signed a portion of the association pact that had been rejected by Yanukovych in November 2013. The IMF ultimately proposed an $18 billion loan package that was contingent on Ukraine’s adoption of a range of austerity measures that included devaluation of the hryvnya and curbs on state subsidies that reduced the price of natural gas to consumers.

Russia continued to solidify its hold on Crimea, and it abrogated the 2010 treaty that had extended its lease on the port of Sevastopol in exchange for a discount on natural gas. The price Russia charged Ukraine for natural gas skyrocketed some 80 percent in a matter of weeks. While Russia openly exerted economic pressure on the interim government in Kyiv, Russian officials publicly stated that they had no additional designs on Ukrainian territory. In early April, however, a NATO press briefing revealed the presence of an estimated 40,000 Russian troops, massed in a state of high readiness, just across Ukraine’s border. Subsequently, heavily armed pro-Russian gunmen stormed government buildings in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Luhansk, Horlivka, and Kramatorsk. In Kharkiv a group of ostensibly local gunmen mistakenly seized an opera house, believing it to be city hall. As was the case in Crimea, a number of these takeovers were executed by men with Russian equipment, in uniforms bearing no insignia, acting with military precision. In the city of Slov’yansk in the Donets Basin, a gun battle erupted as pro-Russian militiamen occupied buildings and established roadblocks.

Turchynov imposed a deadline on those occupying the buildings, offering them immunity from prosecution if they surrendered but threatening a military response if they did not. The deadline passed without incident, the occupiers consolidated their gains, and Turchynov called on the United Nations to dispatch peacekeeping forces to eastern Ukraine to restore order. Meanwhile, he signaled his support for one of the key demands of the pro-Russian camp—a popular referendum on the conversion of Ukraine into a federation, a change that would convey greater autonomy at the regional level. On April 15 the Ukrainian military successfully retook the airfield at Kramatorsk, but the following day a broader effort to reassert control in Slov’yansk went sharply awry when Ukrainian troops surrendered six armoured personnel carriers to pro-Russian militiamen. As emergency talks between Ukraine, the United States, the EU, and Russia began in Geneva, Ukrainian troops in Mariupol repelled an assault by pro-Russian gunmen that left several militiamen dead.

Although all parties at Geneva agreed to work to defuse the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia commenced military maneuvers on its side of the border, and pro-Russian militants expanded their zone of control, seizing additional government buildings and establishing armed checkpoints. In late April Volodymyr Rybak, a Horlivka city council representative and a member of Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party, was kidnapped and killed by a pro-Russian militia. Subsequently, dozens would be abducted and held by pro-Russian forces, including eight members of an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission, numerous Ukrainian and Western journalists, and several members of Ukrainian police and security services. The U.S. and the EU unveiled a fresh round of sanctions against Russia, and Kharkiv mayor Gennady Kernes, a member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions who had reversed his pro-Moscow course and declared his support for a united Ukraine, was seriously wounded by a sniper. On May 2 the Ukrainian government restarted its offensive against pro-Russian forces in Slov’yansk. Although two helicopters were lost to hostile fire, Turchynov reported that many separatists had been killed or arrested. That same day, violence erupted in Odessa, a city that had been relatively unscathed until that point, and dozens of pro-Russian demonstrators were killed when the building they occupied caught fire.

On May 9 Putin celebrated Victory Day, a holiday that commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, with a trip to Crimea and a review of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Days before Putin’s visit, the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, a Kremlin advisory body, had released a cautionary report about Crimea that sharply contradicted the officially published results of the March 16 independence referendum. Actual voter turnout was estimated to have been between 30 and 50 percent, with just over half of those casting ballots choosing annexation by Russia. As self-declared separatist governments in Luhansk and Donetsk prepared to stage their own referenda on independence, Ukrainian security forces continued to contest territory with pro-Russian militias, and a particularly bloody clash in Mariupol left as many as 20 dead. Those referenda, held in separatist-controlled cities on May 11, were dismissed by Kyiv as “a farce” and were widely criticized throughout the West. Widespread irregularities were observed: masked gunmen directly supervised polls, voters casting multiple ballots were commonplace, and Ukrainian police reportedly seized 100,000 pre-completed “yes” ballots from armed separatists outside Slov’yansk. While stopping short of recognizing the results of the referenda, which overwhelmingly favoured independence, Putin said that he respected the will of the voters, even as the Kremlin called for negotiations. The EU responded by expanding its sanctions against Russian individuals and companies.