This year there was no concert to celebrate with magnificence the ninth anniversary of the annexation of the Crimean peninsula. Instead of the mass bath that took place last year at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, shortly after sending the army into Ukraine, Vladimir Putin yesterday preferred a surprise visit to the autonomous city of Sevastopol, a emblematic place for Moscow because it houses the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
According to images broadcast by the state television channel Rossiya-1, the Russian president received the governor of Sevastopol, Mikhaïl Razvojáev. The head of the Kremlin inaugurated the Korsun Art School and children’s center.
Putin also visited the new historical and archaeological park Khersones Tauric, near the port of Sevastopol. It is a large-scale project in the ancient Greek colony of Chersonese that “is being developed at an incredible pace thanks to the military builders,” the governor said.
Russia appropriated the Crimean peninsula in March 2014 with the total opposition of Ukraine. The territory’s two administrative entities, the Republic of Crimea and the autonomous city of Sevastopol, held referendums that Kyiv and its allies consider illegal. 96.77% of voters in Crimea and 95.6% of those in Sevastopol voted in favor of joining Russia.
On March 18, 2014, Putin signed the treaty with the two entities, with which both became Russian regions in the eyes of Moscow. Ukraine continues to consider Crimea as its territory temporarily occupied by Russia, a position endorsed by many Western countries.
Authorities in Kyiv insist they will fight to oust Russia from Crimea and other territories occupied by Russia since Putin ordered the start of the current war with Ukraine. For the Kremlin, this is a historically closed issue.
Putin’s visit took place a day after the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague (Netherlands), issued an arrest warrant against Putin as “allegedly responsible” for war crimes for the illegal deportation of hundreds of children from Ukraine.
Putin has so far not commented on this decision, but his spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, described it as “legally void”, since Russia is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the court’s founding norm, adopted on 1998. Russia finds this issue “scandalous and unacceptable”, said Peskov.
Yesterday, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, listed the conditions necessary to achieve a stable peace with Ukraine. Among other issues, “an inalienable part (of a possible arrangement) must be the lifting of all illegal sanctions and lawsuits against Russia presented in international judicial bodies”, stressed Zakharova.
On Friday, Putin held a video conference meeting on Crimea’s economic development. Yesterday, as Peskov had announced, everyone on the Black Sea peninsula was ready to communicate with Putin remotely. “Finally he came in person, by car. He was driving himself. Our country has an amazing leader!” described an enthusiastic Razvojáev.
