The Occupation of Crimea – a Challenge for the Global Order

As 2021 draws to a close, we look back on this year’s important events. Among them is the Crimea Platform, which was launched in August at Ukraine’s initiative to shore up support for the country’s efforts to return the Russian-occupied peninsula. Olha Skrypnyk, the Coordi­nator of the Group for Human Rights and Inter­na­tional Human­i­tarian Law of the Platform’s Expert Network, explains its relevance.

The inaugural summit of the Crimea Platform on 23 August in Kyiv was the first inter­na­tional political event focused on the Black Sea peninsula since its Russian occupation began in 2014. The platform is a new inter­na­tional coordi­nation and consul­tation format that is supported by 47 countries and inter­na­tional organi­za­tions. Its launch was attended by 15 heads of state and govern­ments, two speakers of parlia­ments, 14 ministers as well as the heads of insti­tu­tions of the European Union, the Secre­taries-General of the Council of Europe and the GUAM Organi­zation for Democracy and Economic Devel­opment, as well as the Deputy Secretary-General of NATO.

This event may become an actual historical milestone because it is the first insti­tu­tional format to find mecha­nisms for the de-occupation of Crimea and the protection of human rights as well as to create possible platforms for negoti­a­tions on Crimea, including the release of Ukrainians imprisoned by Russia for political reasons.

During the past almost eight years, many important documents have been adopted: resolu­tions of the UN General Assembly, PACE, EU, and OSCE; major lawsuits against Russia in the context of a legal war with the aggressor country have been initiated. At the same time, there were no steady and consis­tently functioning inter­na­tional political formats. The Normandy format — meetings of Ukraine, Germany, France, and Russia — launched in 2014, does not cover issues related to the occupation of Crimea. Similarly, the Minsk agree­ments refer exclu­sively to the armed conflict in the Donbas.

In 2019, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an attempt to raise the issue of Crimea during the meeting of the “Normandy Quartet ” in Paris, but there were no specific talks on this subject. Zelensky said at the time: “No one in the ‘Normandy Format’ wants to talk about Crimea, especially Russia.” According to many experts, in fact, not only Russia does not want to talk about Crimea in this format, Germany, and France also uses it only to raise the issue of resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Probably the only publicly known negoti­a­tions between Ukraine and Russia on Crimea was for the so-called big exchange in September 2019, when 35 Ukrainian citizens illegally detained by Russian author­ities were released.¹ Among them were eleven political prisoners, including Crimeans Oleh Sentsov, Oleksandr Kolchenko, Volodymyr Balukh, and Crimean Tatar Edem Bekirov, as well as 24 Ukrainian navy servicemen captured by Russia after the attack on Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait on 25 November 2018.²

However, these ad hoc negoti­a­tions focused exclu­sively on releasing individuals, including for the first time those who had been imprisoned in occupied Crimea. But this had no impact on the issue of the peninsula’s de-occupation and did not lead to any other political dialogue. Moreover, after the “big exchange” in 2019, there have been no other exchanges or releases of Crimeans, though Russia has imprisoned at least 45 other people within polit­i­cally motivated criminal cases in Crimea since.

The system of polit­i­cally motivated perse­cution of Crimean residents is one of the terrible conse­quences of the peninsula’s occupation. Since 2014, the Russian occupation author­ities have been perse­cuting both those who did not support the occupation and those who have been advocating to preserve the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages, culture, identity, to protect freedom of speech and expression. More than 100 Ukrainian nationals are kept in places of detention not for crimes, but for their political position, journal­istic, or human rights activ­ities. This system of polit­i­cally motivated perse­cution includes the entire government vertical of law enforcement agencies, security bodies, courts, and illegal armed units supported by the Russian author­ities. Torture has become a common practice in such cases, forcing the victims to incrim­inate themselves and agree on recording staged “confes­sional” videos, which are then broadcast by the Russian FSB through controlled media. Tellingly, no Russian FSB agents or policemen have ever been prose­cuted for torturing Ukrainian citizens.³

Almost all religious organi­za­tions, except the Russian Orthodox Church, are subject to perse­cution or various forms of discrim­i­nation. Even Jehovah’s Witnesses are now being sent to prison colonies. In 2020, the first sentences against Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose religious organi­za­tions were declared ‘extremist’ in the Russian Feder­ation in 2017, were passed. They were sentenced to 6 years impris­onment only for their religious views.

One more strate­gi­cally signif­icant issue is the milita­rization of Crimea, which is also manifested in the human­i­tarian dimension. This means milita­rizing the civilian population, changing the demographic compo­sition, imposing Russian citizenship and infor­mation isolation, and breaking local Ukrainian citizens’ socio-cultural ties with the rest of Ukraine.

A study of the situation shows that the occupation author­ities invest most of their resources for milita­rizing youth and children. By now the entire education system, which covers more than 200,000 children, focuses on raising them exclu­sively in a Russian identity context, while struc­turally preventing the preser­vation or devel­opment of other identities like Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar. Teaching prior­ities are the cult of war and weapons as opposed to democ­ratic values and tolerance. A lot of state money is being spent by Russia for this purpose, holding in-school and out-of-school campaigns. Moreover, the number of educa­tional insti­tu­tions, where children are taught military basics and encouraged to later join the Russian armed forces, is constantly growing. If young men reject military service, they risk criminal prose­cution that might result in imprisonment.

All this is going on while Russia is strength­ening its military presence in Crimea by illegally deploying more troops and increasing the number of military bases after having ousted the Ukrainian military from its bases in 2014. This is a real threat to the security of the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Thus, the impli­ca­tions and challenges of Crimea’s occupation are beyond just the “Ukraine — Russia Conflict”. Only a consol­i­dated inter­na­tional effort can change the situation, and the Crimea Platform summit has proven that such consol­i­dation is possible, even in the face of new global challenges like the Covid pandemic and migration.

Aware of this, Ukraine in 2020 initiated the estab­lishment of the Crimea Platform, the first inter­na­tional format that deals with the occupied peninsula. The format was developed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to implement an initiative of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Platform has five main goals:

1. Inten­si­fying the inter­na­tional policy on non-recog­nition of the Russian Feder­ation attempt to annex Crimea
2. Monitoring and coordi­nation of inter­na­tional sanctions
3. Counter­acting human rights viola­tions and inter­na­tional human­i­tarian law norms
4. Securing safety and freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov
5. Recov­ering from the economic and environ­mental impacts of the peninsula occupation.

In all these aspects, the Crimea Platform acts in three dimen­sions: govern­mental, parlia­mentary, and expert.

At the govern­mental level, the major event was the Crimea Platform Inaugural Summit in Kyiv, which featured repre­sen­ta­tives of Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Japan, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxem­bourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, the Nether­lands, New Zealand, Norway, Northern Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the USA, and the EU, NATO, Council of Europe and GUAM.⁴

As a result, partic­i­pants signed a Joint Decla­ration, that approves the platform’s estab­lishment and its aim to peace­fully end Russia’s temporary occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol and to restore Ukraine’s control over this territory in full accor­dance with inter­na­tional law. The platform partic­i­pants’ cooper­ation is also aimed at addressing emerging challenges and hybrid threats resulting from the ongoing milita­rization of Crimea.⁵

At the parliament level, the Crimea Platform Inter-Group Associ­ation was estab­lished. It started its activ­ities in December 2020 and has been acting through inter-parlia­mentary friendship groups and parlia­mentary assem­blies of inter­na­tional organizations.

On 23 August, the day of the Summit, the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, held an extra­or­dinary session dedicated to the Crimea Platform that was attended also by MPs from other countries. At this session, the Rada adopted a Resolution that calls on the UN, the Parlia­mentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the OSCE Parlia­mentary Assembly, the NATO Parlia­mentary Assembly, the BSEC Parlia­mentary Assembly, the European Parliament, foreign govern­ments, and parlia­ments to intensify inter­na­tional cooper­ation within the Crimea Platform to counter the Russian Federation’s aggression.⁶ Inter­na­tional cooper­ation formats on issues related to the Platform have been estab­lished with some countries — for instance, members of the Latvian Saeima have set up a group in their parliament.

The expert dimension of the platform is primarily based on its Expert Network, whose devel­opment began in March 2021. That network was estab­lished as a community of Ukrainian and foreign experts, non-govern­mental organi­za­tions, initia­tives, associ­a­tions, think tanks, and scien­tific insti­tu­tions, whose activ­ities contribute to achieving the Platform’s main goals.

The Expert Network officially began its work on 6 August, when its Inaugural Forum was held in Kyiv.⁷ Based on the Forum’s outcomes, the Network’s activ­ities are now struc­tured into seven groups: non-recog­nition policy and sanctions; human rights and inter­na­tional human­i­tarian law; security, economy and environ­mental protection, cultural heritage of Crimea; human­i­tarian policy; restoration of the rights of indigenous peoples as an instrument of de-occupation of Crimea.

Recent events in Crimea have only highlighted the urgent need to consol­idate inter­na­tional support and the Crimea Platform’s joint response to gross and consistent human rights viola­tions, which have resulted in the large-scale and systemic political perse­cution of the occupied peninsula’s residents. On 3–4 September, FSB agents detained Nariman Dzhelial, the first deputy of the Mejlis of Crimean Tatar People (the repre­sen­tative body of the Crimean indigenous people), and the brothers Aziz and Asan Akhtemov. They were accused of “sabotage” — damage to a gas pipeline on August 23, the day of the Crimea Platform Summit. The fact that the FSB tortured the detainees⁸, dissem­i­nated via controlled media staged inter­ro­gation videos of the Akhmetov brothers after they had been tortured, and obstructed the work of lawyers, confirms human rights activists’ criticism that the case is polit­i­cally motivated and fabri­cated, just like hundreds of other criminal cases before, while more than 110 Ukrainian nationals remain in prison colonies in Crimea and Russia.⁹

The case of Dzhelial and Akhmetov is the first in which persons are perse­cuted for their support of the Crimea Platform. An actual reason for Nariman Dzhelial’s perse­cution might be his public support for the Crimea Platform and his partic­i­pation in its Inaugural Summit. However, we still lack a consol­i­dated response of all Platform partic­i­pants to the new wave of perse­cu­tions. Therefore, one of the Platform’s major first steps should be building up a well-struc­tured system of commu­ni­cation and decision-making to achieve its declared goals.

At the same time, the fact that 46 delegates partic­i­pated in the Summit is a demon­stration of the broad inter­na­tional support for Ukraine and the readiness to find new mecha­nisms to end human rights viola­tions, to release Kremlin hostages, and restore security in the region. Therefore, arranging a continuous and consistent post-Summit activity should be prior­i­tized since the Summit was only the start of the Platform. The Crimea Platform will achieve its goals only if the approach to the issue of Crimea’s occupation will change: this challenge is not limited to the region, it threatens European and global security because of Russia’s geopo­litical ambitions and its efforts to further escalate tensions in different regions.

¹ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/what-price-did-ukraine-pay-for-prisoner-exchange/
² https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/07/long-awaited-russia-ukraine-prisoner-exchange-begins
³ https://crimeahrg.org/en/russian-security-men-not-punished-for-torturing-ukrainians-in-crimea/
⁴ https://mfa.gov.ua/news/dmitro-kuleba-pro-zapusk-krimskoyi-platformi-mi-povernuli-krim-iz-zabuttya
⁵ Joint Decla­ration of the Inter­na­tional Crimea Platform Partic­i­pants: https://crimea-platform.org/en/samit/deklaraciya
⁶ http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc4_1?pf3511=72536
⁷ https://crimea-platform.org/ekspertna-merezha
⁸ https://crimeahrg.org/en/crimean-tatar-asan-akhtemov-severely-tortured-to-beat-a-testimony-out-lawyer/
⁹ https://crimeahrg.org/en/urgent-statement-of-human-rights-organizations-regarding-abduction-of-nariman-dzhelial-and-other-crimean-tatars-in-the-occupied-crimea/

Olha Skrypnyk chairs the Crimean Human Rights Group and is the Coordi­nator of the Group for Human Rights and Inter­na­tional Human­i­tarian Law in the Crimea Platform’s expert network. A German version of this text has been published on the Ukraine verstehen website.