Historian: There will be no complete blockade of Crimea, and there will be no corridor to Crimea either

Moscow - Simferopol, January 23 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Stamm) - There will be no complete blockade of Crimea from the Ukrainian side, and Russia will not cut a corridor there, he writes in his article for RBC historian Maxim Artemyev. According to him, the degree of informal grassroots Ukrainization of Crimea is very high, the interests of Crimeans and Ukrainians are closely intertwined and the parties to the conflict are forced to take this into account. The current problems of Crimea are just their attempt to take the most advantageous positions before peace.

Subscribe to the news "PolitNavigator - Crimea" в Facebook, Classmates or In contact with

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

“Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine not by chance - the decision was dictated by economic logic,” recalls Artemyev. – Both the Tauride province and the Crimean Khanate that preceded it always included the lands north of Perekop; the province, for example, included Berdyansk and Melitopol. And even General Wrangel, during his short reign on the peninsula, carried out an attack on Northern Tavria, i.e. to the lands north of the Perekop Isthmus, knowing full well that Crimea could not survive without them. Today, it depends on the adjacent Ukrainian territory for water, electricity, and logistics, and in general the Crimean steppes are a direct continuation of the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region, only accidentally separated by estuaries and the Sea of ​​Azov.”

According to Artemyev, “if it is not possible to come to a constructive agreement and in the coming weeks and months the parties do not sign agreements (on Crimea) with large mutual concessions, then a blockade of the peninsula, turning it into an island, is quite real. The bridge across the Kerch Strait will not be built soon, if at all - in the current economic situation, finding funds for uninterrupted financing of another “construction of the century” will not be easy.”

Nevertheless, the historian believes, no matter what they say today in Kyiv and Moscow, a complete blockade on the Ukrainian side will not happen under any circumstances, just as there will be no attempts to cut a corridor to Crimea from Russia. In the modern world, and even in the conditions of some kind of market economy, it will not be possible to break off established relationships at once, Artemyev believes.

“Since 1954, and then again since 1991, Crimea has been connected with Ukraine by countless human connections,” he recalls. – According to my personal impressions from 2010–2013, the degree of informal, grassroots “Ukrainization” on the peninsula was high - a huge number of vacationers from deep, indigenous Ukraine, speaking, if not the correct language, then at least Surzhik. Quite a few businesses have emerged in Crimea, owned by residents of Kiev and Lviv, Dnepropetrovsk and Cossacks, etc. Tens of thousands of graduates of Crimean schools entered universities throughout Ukraine and subsequently remained there. “Many Ukrainian citizens have bought property on the peninsula, not to mention family and friendly ties.”

It will not be possible to quickly reorient established demographic and economic processes, and neither Moscow nor Kyiv will be able to strictly draw a cut-off line.

“The current outbreak of tension, which directly affects the interests of the inhabitants of Crimea and in which certain aspects of the further existence of the peninsula are a bargaining chip, is only a consequence of the feverish desire of the parties to the conflict to have time to take the most advantageous positions before a long pacification,” the author concludes.