ISSUE ANALYSIS PAPER. International Conflicts: Annexation of Crimea

International Conflicts:
Annexation of Crimea
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The Annexation of Crimea is one of the recent international conflicts that involve members of the United Nations i.e. Russia and Ukraine. The conflict involves the jurisdiction of the Crimean peninsula that orders both countries and offers access to the black sea that connects to the Mediterranean. The legislature of the region has been transferred between the two countries since the 16th century and the countries have employed different approaches in claiming control of the territory. Annexation has been used twice by Russia in 1783 and 2014 and a peaceful reclamation by Ukraine in 1954. The 2014 annexation by Russia took place during the United Nations resolution that makes it suitable for international law and diplomacy application analysis. Applying the international law led by the UN would be the best approach in attaining a long-term peaceful resolution about the crisis as it offers a third neutral party in the process. The participation of the international community in resolving the crisis idealizes it for the study of diplomacy application and international law in resolving international crises. In this regard, this paper examines the approaches that have been used to solve the Crimean crisis as well as their achieved outcomes and proposes alternative methods that can be adopted to offer a permanent solution.
Background of the Crisis
The conflict between Ukraine and Russia over the Crimean territory is tied to old territorial disputes that existed in the Soviet Union. The official date of the annexation was on March 18, 2014, after a series of the UN council and the Crimean parliament concerning the decision to accede the region to Russia. The conflict, however, has developed for years emanating from the control and governance of the Crimean region that is geographically between the two countries. It dates back to 1783 when Russia did the first annexation of the area under the management of Catherine the Great. The territory was again transferred to the Ukrainian government (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) in 1954 as a result of Nikita Khrushchev’s program under the Communist Party. The crisis is based on the control of Crimea between the two countries with separation from Russia being the main agenda in the subsequent referendums and treaties. The conflict brewed again in 1991 when, due to the republic’s independence, attempted to remove the Russia Black Sea Fleet from the peninsula that acts as a connection of the country’s military to the Mediterranean. The events leading to the final annexation started in 2014 when Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from power through a violent coup in Kyiv. This led to the willingness in passing a referendum to rejoin Russia on March 16, 2014. The factors that led to the declaration of the annexation illegal by the UN General Assembly on March 27, 2014 included the unpopularity of the referendum as most citizens refrained from the voting exercise. This will be covered in the processes used to resolve the crisis.[Juergen, Bering. “The Prohibition on Annexation: Lessons from Crimea”. International Law and Politics 49 no. 747(2017). 748-790...