Russia's policy of farce and the aggressive war continues.
When Crimea was occupied in 2014, Russian international law lawyers argued that the invasion and annexation could be justified because the Ukrainian state had disappeared - in other words, because of the chaos Russia's invasion had caused. As the Russian politician and ideologue known for his geopolitics, Aleksandr Dugin, said it, a war to tear down the Ukrainian state was a war against the EU: "We must take over and destroy Europe".
In a grand ceremony in Moscow, Putin granted what he called the Crimean people's "wish", expanding the borders of the Russian Federation. This violated basic principles of consensus in international law, the UN Charter and every single agreement that had been concluded between independent Ukraine and independent Russia.
It was on March 16 that some Ukrainian residents of Crimea took part in an election farce which the Russian occupying power called a referendum. Before the election, all public propaganda went in the same direction. Posters declared that the choice was between Russia and Nazism. Voters did not have access to Ukrainian or international media. There were two elections on the ballots, both of which confirmed Russia's annexation of Crimea. The first choice was to vote for Russia's annexation of Crimea. The second was to give autonomous power to the Crimean authorities, which had just been installed by Russia.
According to internal information from the Russian presidential administration, attendance was around 30% and the result split between the two possibilities. According to the official count, participation was around 90%, and almost everyone had voted for the variant that most directly led to annexation. In Sevastopol, the official voter turnout was 123 percent.
There were no qualified observers present, but Moscow invited some European far-right politicians to endorse the official result, the Front National sent Aymeric Chauprade to Crimea, and Marine Le Pen personally endorsed the official result.
The civilized part of the world must never recognize any of these farces now being carried out by Russia.
Source: American history professor Timothy Snyder
Comments powered by CComment