It is obvious that systematic violations of the rights of Crimean residents and international crimes by the Russian invaders became possible thanks to the occupation of the peninsula. Repression, racism, persecution, illegal mobilization, total corruption, destruction of the ecosystem and maximum militarization on the peninsula are the direct consequences of Russian aggression.
Currently, the experts of the Association of Reintegration of Crimea tried to systematize and consider the main propaganda theses, which the Kremlin criminally uses to try to “justify” the attempted annexation of Crimea.
They constitute the fake “ideological foundations” of the occupation, and therefore it is worth clarifying their nature and content. This problem is quite important, because using these theses, the aggressor tries to influence both the population under his control and the states of the world.
Today, under the conditions of a full-scale war against Ukraine, the aggressor “galvanizes” these theses under the conditions of criminal “mobilization”, as well as terrorist and nuclear blackmail of Ukraine and other civilized states.
“Historical Belonging of Crimea”
This is one of the most common fake theses, which the Kremlin criminally claims all the years of the occupation of the Crimea, starting with the “Crimean Spring”. Its “essence” is that Crimea was once part of the territory of the Russian Empire and was a part of the so-called “Tavrida province”, and then for a certain period it was part of the Soviet Russian “Federal Republic”. The occupiers constantly point out that the territories of modern Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions were once part of the “Tavrida province”, and its center was Simferopol [1].
Recently, this thesis began to be used in the newly occupied territories. Thus, in June of this year, in occupied Melitopol, the invaders hung billboards “to the 220th anniversary of the establishment of Tavrida province” [2]. The self-proclaimed “head of Crimea” Aksyonov together with his client, the “deputy of the state duma” Mykhailo Sheremet, began to actively “publicize” the criminal “restoration of Tavrida province” immediately after the start of full-scale Russian aggression and occupation of part of the Kherson Region.
What’s more, Aksyonov even criminally “referred to the opinion” of some “Crimean Tatars” who supposedly sought “restoration of the borders of the Tavrida province” [3]. Although there were no such statements in reality and the whole world knows that the Crimean Tatar People are in favor of the de-occupation of the peninsula by Ukraine, and in fact the historical Tavrida province was a tool of imperial colonization of the Crimea, of discrimination and genocide the Crimean Tatars.
Currently, there is an indisputable situation: all the time that Crimea was under Russian rule, its population was known not to have a good fate and the right to vote. Well, the “classic” for the aggressor talks about the “handover of Crimea” regarding the inclusion of the peninsula into the Ukrainian SSR break down on a simple fact – Russia recognized, both before 1991 and later, the full legality of Crimea’s stay as part of the Ukrainian SSR and Ukraine, and no one has ever provided “proof” of the opposite, except for outright fakes [4].
“Crimea and Ukrainian nationalists”
The fake thesis about “dangerous Ukrainian nationalists” has been declared by the Russian occupiers since 2014, primarily as a criminal argument in favor of “renunciation of Ukraine and everything Ukrainian”. Today, it is also mentioned as an aggressor, but rather for the sake of “fueling” the fictitious “ideology” of the invaders, which they impose on Crimean residents [5].
The closer to a full-scale invasion, the more “radical” the statements of occupation propaganda became. In December 2021, Serhey Shoigu criminally announced that Russia allegedly “saved Crimea from Ukrainian neo-fascists and ultra-nationalists”. The self-proclaimed “authority” of Crimea permanently criminally declares the alleged “rescue” of the peninsula from the “Nazi regime and civil war”.
Such criminal statements about fake “Ukrainian Nazis” are heard when the Russian army is committing atrocities in the newly occupied settlements of Ukraine, which we learn about every day. This happens because a significant number of Russians who are fighting against Ukraine are neo-Nazis who belong to various organizations that operate in Russia.
For example, this is the Russian paramilitary group “Rusichi” and the organization “Russian Imperial Movement”, which profess Nazi ideology. According to experts, since 2014 Russian neo-Nazis have massively participated in hostilities in Donbas [6]. Neo-Nazi groups in Russia apparently operate under the cover of special services and are needed to perform particularly dirty tasks.
At the same time, no victims of any “Ukrainian nationalists” were found in Crimea until 2014. According to a certain “irony of fate”, all those separate crimes that were actually committed on the peninsula, as well as in any region of the world, on “national grounds”, had nothing common with the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism at all, and were in the name of fans of “Russian world” or “white race”, who received appropriate punishments from the Ukrainian authorities.
“European integration as a sentence”
Since the beginning of the capture of the Crimea, the occupiers constantly emphasize that the aggressor supposedly “saved Crimea from decline”, because the policy of European integration for some reason “would necessarily lead to the destruction of the economy” of the region.
At the same time, the Kremlin is forced to somehow “compromise” the high standards of living in the countries of not only Western, but also Central Europe, powerful guarantees of human rights, in particular social and labor rights, high-quality roads and environmental technologies, that is, everything that the aggressor does not have.
Russian propagandists are unlikely to discuss in their studios why only a third of populated areas are gasified in Russia itself, and why under such conditions the official Kremlin lies “about more than 80% of gasification” [7]. Despite the obvious impoverishment of Crimean residents, the self-proclaimed “authority” of the peninsula since 2014 has been constantly announcing “growth in economic indicators”, “increasing wages and social benefits”, but such propaganda, which is in contrast to reality, is known to be ineffective.
Therefore, strictly according to Soviet models, the aggressor bets not on the “refrigerator” but on the “show”, calling Europe nothing else than “gayropa” and “prison of nations”. It wants the residents of the occupied territories to believe that “hostile” European values “contrary to morality” and, as it were, “intended to destroy the usual ideas about the family” [8].
At the same time, in order to at least somehow prove “superiority” over “rotten Europe”, the main “practical” dimension of such occupiers’ propaganda becomes the “fight against homosexuality”, “gay parades”, etc. [9], in particular, from the side of individual collaborators, who are used to same-sex relationships.
In this dimension, the activity of the “top journalist” from the Russian TV-trash Anton Krasovsky, who previously constantly declared his unconventional orientation, and currently, with the de facto consent of the Kremlin, criminally calls on the air for the “drowning and burning” of Ukrainian children exclusively for that they love their country [10].
“The Fall of the USSR Error”
The supposed “tragicness” of the collapse of the USSR has become one of the key mantras the Kremlin constantly proclaims in recent years when it comes to Crimea and the war against Ukraine. But talk of the alleged “biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” [11] [12] is faced with a simple reality: no territory that managed to break away from Moscow in 1991 wants “return”.
All the more, the absolute majority of Crimean residents do not want to live by the “Soviet past”. Instead, the occupiers seek to make Crimea a “reserve of the Soviet system”. According to the Crimean Tatars, over the past eight years, Aksyonov and company have built “something very similar to the USSR in miniature” on the peninsula, including total repression, censorship and propaganda [13].
The desire to “revive” the USSR became the most tragicomic when the Russian invaders began to “restore monuments to Lenin” in the newly occupied territories of the Kherson and Zaporizhzha regions, at a time when even the military aggressor’s propaganda was not able to “explain” why this is happening at all.
Many experts spoke of Putin’s “burning desire” to “revive the USSR” through an attempt to annex Ukraine and Belarus “on the anniversary of its formation” in December 2022, but these criminal dreams have already obviously received an obvious fiasco. And therefore, criminally talking about the “illegality of the collapse” of the USSR, Russian propaganda can think only about the legality of the existence of the Russian Federation itself, as a result of such a collapse.
“Friendship and unity of peoples”
This is probably the most cynical of the fake theses that the Kremlin invented to criminally “justify” the attempted annexation the Ukrainian peninsula. In fact, Russia positions itself as “the last bastion of morality, humanity and democracy”, around which “all the long-suffering peoples of the planet Earth” are united, which the Kremlin simply “saved from inevitable destruction”.
This is, of course, irony, but this is exactly how the occupiers position themselves. They commit war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine, and declare that it is allegedly “only for the benefit of the Ukrainians themselves”.
It is noteworthy that in Russia itself, the number of crimes on ethnic grounds is increasing every year.
It is worth recalling the events of 2007, when “skinhead” Arthur Reno confessed to 37 attacks on people from Asia and the North Caucasus. Then it was found that out of 22 attacks, only one person survived [20]. And this is just one example out of thousands that exist.
Since 2014, crimes on national grounds in the occupied Crimea, often combined with the activities of ethnic groups, primarily from the Caucasus, have turned from an exceptional situation into a current and everyday practice, which the Russian occupiers are not particularly keen to hide.
The Crimean Tatar People have also experienced the “friendliness” of the invaders in recent years. Total terror, racial discrimination, persecution and illegal imprisonment, forced disappearance of public activists and forced “mobilization” – this is the list of those criminal manifestations of “friendship of peoples” that have become a reality for the occupied Crimea.
It is noteworthy that declaring the “friendship of peoples”, the aggressor criminally, within the framework of the policy of genocide, denies the existence of the Ukrainian people in general, declaring a supposedly “one Russian people”, and denies the Crimean Tatar People the status of indigenous people on the peninsula.
At the same time, even Russian propaganda does not mention the fake “Crimean people” who supposedly “realized their rights” in 2014, due to the obvious worthlessness of such a construction as pure delusion.
The above criminal theses of the aggressor regarding the occupied Crimea have a lot in common, apart from their well-known falsity.
First of all, they are phantom, because they do not reflect the real life of the 21st century, do not take into account the real aspirations, needs and desires of ordinary people, even in a distorted form, they are not able to ensure the well-being or safety of the population.
Secondly, they are unchanged, because over the past decades, the aggressor has not been able to invent and offer anything “new” to humanity, its own population and the long-suffering Crimean residents, since no rational, “justified” reasons for Russian aggression exist and cannot exist.
Third, they are ignored and rejected by all who are not under the direct power or influence of the aggressor, and at the same time they are incapable of self-reproduction in any culture and society, without Russian military or subversive activities from the outside.
Fourthly, they have not become attractive to any people, state or territory, because only individual dictators publicly agree with them and, of course, only because of their own criminal interests and needs.
Therefore, all theses used by Russia in the war against Ukraine are based on constant historical lies and fear of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Therefore, the de-occupation of Crimea will mean not only the restoration of historical justice and the triumph of international law, but also the final collapse of this aggressor’s misanthropic “ideology”.
Sources:
- https://news.liga.net/ua/politics/news/tavricheskaya-guberniya-i-nebesnyy-gorod-gur-o-proektah-kremlya-po-okkupatsii-yuga-i-vostoka
- https://tsn.ua/ukrayina/v-okupovanomu-melitopoli-z-yavilisya-baneri-do-220-richchya-stvorennya-tavriyskoyi-guberniyi-2067376.html
- https://ru.krymr.com/a/rossiya-ukraina-voyna-krym-khersonshchina-tavricheskaya-guberniya/31816849.html
- https://zaxid.net/krim_peredali_ukrayini_shhob_tisnishe_privyazati_do_rosiyi_n1505767
- https://elle.ua/ludi/novosty/genocid-1944-roku-ta-aneksya-krimskogo-hanstva-u-18-stoltt-storichn-fakti-pro-krim-yak-mayut-znati-ukranc/
- https://www.golosameriki.com/a/lavrov-and-crimea/3430874.html
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- https://lb.ua/world/2014/08/29/277674_putin_razocharovan_navyazannimi.html
- https://ukranews.com/news/268717-aksenov-gey-paradov-v-krymu-nykogda-ne-budet
- https://www.unian.ua/russianworld/topiti-spalyuvati-rosiyskiy-propagandist-zaklikav-vbivati-ukrajinskih-ditey-video-12020715.html
- https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/news/story/2005/04/050425_putin_ussr_statements
- https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2008/04/7/4437118/
- https://ua.korrespondent.net/world/295292-yunij-skinhed-yakij-ziznavsya-v-37-ubivstvah-vidmovivsya-vid-svoyih-svidchen
