Published August 28th, 2009 by Future Atlas
Russia-Ukraine Tensions over Crimea
The New York Times reported today on tense relations between Russia and Ukraine, as “both sides resort to provocations and recriminations.”
It is the Crimean Peninsula, appended to Ukraine by Stalin but heavily populated by Russians and Crimean Tatars, “where the tensions are perhaps most in danger of bursting into open conflict,” though “both countries publicly avow that they do not want the bad feelings to spiral out of control,” Times reporter Clifford Levy notes.
The situation could worsen in next five months, as the January 2010 Ukrainian election “might cause Ukrainian candidates to respond more aggressively to Russia to show their independence,” Levy writes.
Crimea is “roughly 60 percent ethnic Russian and would prefer that the peninsula separate from Ukraine and be part of Russia” and Sevastopol, where Russia maintains a naval base, “has an even higher proportion of ethnic Russians.”
Levy writes:
Sergei P. Tsekov, a senior politician in Crimea who heads the main ethnic Russian communal organization, said he hoped that Russia would wholeheartedly endorse Crimean separatism just as it did the aspirations of South Ossetia and another Georgian enclave, Abkhazia.
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