“Crimea is ours!” shout from both sides of the “Chongar” checkpoint on the border between mainland Ukraine and Crimea. Everyone has their arguments, with which you can agree. Ukraine and the UN believe that Crimea was occupied, contrary to the current Constitution of Ukraine. Russia believes that Crimea simply exercised its right to self-determination, as recently Catalonia did. Who is right? And is it really important to us? What difference does it make to us whether the peninsula is under the control of Kiev or Moscow?
I care about something completely different.
I care that Crimea has clean beaches, friendly and quality service, affordable prices, good roads, reliable police and medical services, delicious food, modern attractions, convenient air and rail transport, as well as freedom of information and movement. But the most important thing is that happy people live there.
I don’t care at all what flag they live under, what God they pray to, what language they speak, what nationality they are, what their country is called, or who their president is. If they are happy and glad to see me, I will consider Crimea “mine”. I will go there to relax, just like I go to Italy, Egypt, Mexico, or the Carpathians.
There is no point in discussing what happened in March 2014: whether the referendum was legitimate, whether one and a half million people really came to it, whether they were forced to vote for the annexation of Crimea, whether they were threatened, or if the ballots were tampered with. Something happened, something didn’t. It doesn’t matter now.
What matters is what we, residents of Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, and Kharkiv, want from the residents of Crimea now and what we wanted before?
I have described what I want, and that’s what I wanted before. I want them to be happy and hospitable. If they need to raise Turkish flags over their homes to achieve this, it has nothing to do with me. I will only support them in this decision. If they like the flag of Russia, let them raise it. If tomorrow they want to raise the Ukrainian flag again, I will not object. Because it’s not my business. It’s their choice.
Civic ignorance and political blindness, you might say? Not at all.
I believe that neither the police nor even the army can make one and a half million people do something against their will. No matter how many ballots are forged, the people will not allow large-scale deception if it occurs. There are plenty of examples, such as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine or the Rose Revolution in Georgia. It is quite obvious that the majority of Crimea’s residents really want to see themselves under the flag of Russia at the moment. Why do they want this? We do not know, we can only make assumptions and conduct surveys. The bottom line is that this is their desire.
Renew air and railway communication with the mainland.
Simplify customs control at the border
Restore free trade
To establish diplomatic relations
In other words, it is better to recognize Crimea’s right to independence sooner and make life easier for the people living there.
Do we want Crimea to return under the flag of Ukraine? I don’t quite understand why we need this, but if we do have such ambitions, we should make sure that one and a half million people want it. We should not pressure them and block food supplies, but act in the opposite direction. We need to show them that we are waiting for them and will be very happy to see them back under our flag. For example, we can:
Offer tax breaks to Crimean companies
Allow dual Russian and Ukrainian citizenship.
Remove all restrictions on the Russian language.
I’m not sure if this will help, given Ukraine’s overall dire economic situation relative to the Russian Federation, but it will be a first constructive step.
Returning Crimea by force will not work. This can only be done if its residents want it. And you won’t be able to force love. They will want it when they see a friend in Ukraine, not a country with territorial ambitions, for the sake of which it is ready to ignore the opinions of people living in these territories. Then the time will come for a new referendum, as Grigory Yavlinsky suggests.
Translated by ChatGPT gpt-3.5-turbo/42 on 2024-04-20 at 14:40
