Russia’s annexation of Crimea is a fait accompli. The March 16 referendum did not offer a choice between joining Russia or remaining with Ukraine. It offered a choice between joining Russia or becoming a sovereign state. As Keir Giles, an associate fellow at the UK’s Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia program, put it, this latter choice represented no more than “notional independence under Russian control”. Even if the referendum had been free and fair, it did not present a chance for pro-Ukrainian voices to be heard. Few states regard it as a legitimate. Yet Crimea’s status has never been stable nor is it obviously an integral part of Ukraine culturally. Crimea suffered ethnic cleansing under Josef Stalin at the end of the Second World War, with the forcible removal of Crimean Tartars to Central Asia. Initially falling under the administration of Russia, Crimea was given to Ukraine in 1954 by then Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev, but with substantial regional autonomy. During the break-up of the Soviet Union it became part of the newly independent Ukraine. In 1994, the peninsula elected Yuriy Meshkov on a platform of rejoining Russia. Since then, the region has voted in Ukrainian elections in favour of pro-Russian parties being in power in Kiev.
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