“The people who came to power in Kyiv would have set Crimea on fire without a doubt”

Simferopol, March 04 (PolitNavigator, Vladimir Raichenko) – The reunification of Crimea with Russia was the only way to avoid bloodshed on the peninsula. This is the opinion of Simferopol experts interviewed by a PolitNavigator correspondent.

Oleg Rodivilov, ex-member of the Crimean Parliament:

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“We have a triangle – Russians, the “titular” nation Ukrainians and the so-called “indigenous” nation – the Tatars. Therefore, it is even more difficult to negotiate in a triangle. When Crimea is linked to Kosovo, I laugh, because Crimea is Bosnia. All processes occur much more complexly. Given the negative development of events, demonstrative disrespect for the constitutional rights of citizens on the part of the current Kyiv leadership, anything could happen. In order to avoid the consequences of economic destruction, the Kiev regime is inciting both war and propaganda that Russia, the Orthodox Church, and the Russians are to blame. Thus, there is an entity called the current Kiev government, which would benefit from this conflict. Crimea was the only enclave in Ukraine where Russians were the majority, where 95% of students and schoolchildren chose Russian as a state exam, therefore, when the nationalists entered the Olympus, these people would have set fire to Crimea without a doubt.”

Leonid Grach, ex-speaker of the Crimean parliament:

“If Vladimir Putin and Sergei Shoigu, through the GRU and the corresponding military units of the Black Sea Fleet, had not ensured an operation called “polite little men,” who appeared at the most critical moment, then there would have been a war. All the nationalist fuss around Crimea, plus the sentiments that were in the Crimean environment, political prostitutes in the Supreme Council of Crimea... they didn’t need Crimea then, but their own skins...

We would have been covered in blood, without a doubt, worse than Donbass. For one reason - you need to understand that Crimea is a special geopolitical environment. That tangle of problems could have been solved using this method - a strong-willed decision, a serious operation that saved the lives of not only Crimeans.

A year ago, an international military conflict could have broken out in Crimea. Thank God this didn’t happen.”

Alexander Formanchuk, political scientist:

“Crimean residents can only thank themselves and the Russian Federation for making the right choice in the referendum last year. A year later, the realization only comes of what kind of trouble we avoided, because, of course, Crimea would have been in this massacre. Crimea would most likely have been the first in a series of then-Ukrainian regions to come under attack by the forces of the Maidan, Ukraine's nationalist ruling class, which established a regime of radical anti-Russian project directed against Russia. Since Crimea was the only region in Ukraine where ethnic Russians made up the majority - 58%, then, of course, it was number one on the list of execution regions.

Of course, we could experience all these horrors ourselves. The main distinguishing feature in Crimea would be its higher ethnic component, since we know that the Right Sector and the nationalist ruling class even then, on the Maidan, considered the Crimean Tatars to be true patriots of Ukraine who would defend the peninsula. We see that in today’s Ukraine, the Crimean Tatars are promised more than ever in the expectation that they will mobilize and “liberate” Crimea. Is it good that the overwhelming majority of them are once again showing prudence, an understanding that one should not get drawn into such games? and we see that today, despite all the anti-Russian position of the Majlis and attempts to lead the people in this direction, nothing is working out.

In this regard, I would like to express gratitude to the Crimean Tatars, who, despite all the speculation, show restraint and, like the entire people of Crimea, are integrating into the Russian space. But, if a year ago there had been no “little green men”, a referendum, this most active position of all Crimeans, the overwhelming majority, then it certainly could have been worse.”