Crimean Parliament Seeks to Secede from Ukraine
Thursday, March 6th, 2014March 6, 2014
Members of the Crimean parliament voted today to petition the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow Crimea, the southernmost region of Ukraine, to join the Russian Federation. If the request is granted, Crimean citizens could vote on secession in a referendum on March 16. In Kiev, a federal court quickly ruled that the Crimean parliament’s actions are broadly illegal and issued an arrest warrant for the new prime minister of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov. Aksyonov was installed a week ago after armed men seized the Crimean parliament building and raised the Russian flag.
Nikita Khrushchev led the Communist Party in the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964. In 1954, he transferred Crimea from the Russian Federation to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (AP/Wide World Photos).
Historically, Crimea was part of Russia. In 1954, Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev, detached the Crimean peninsula from the Russian Federation and transferred it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Since Ukraine was a republic within the Soviet Union, the territorial transfer was not particularly troubling to Crimea’s Russian-speaking majority. However, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the people of Russian descent in Crimea found themselves in a new country—Ukraine—legally independent of Russia. (Crimea as well as eastern Ukraine is largely populated with Russian-speaking people with close cultural ties to Russia. Western Ukraine is largely populated with Ukrainian-speaking people who want Ukraine allied with the European Union.)
Key leaders of European Union member nations are currently meeting in Brussels to discuss how to respond to Vladimir Putin’s deployment last week of Russian forces into Crimea. In a surprising move, Russian troops, who had surrounded a missile defense base in Crimea several days ago, packed up and left in the night.
Additional World Book articles:
- Russia 1991 (a Back in Time article)
- Russia in the Post-Soviet World (a special report)
- Ukraine 1994 (a Back in Time article)
