{"id":204500,"date":"2020-03-26T07:40:05","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T07:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=204500"},"modified":"2020-03-28T07:22:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T07:22:01","slug":"six-years-and-20-billion-in-russian-investment-later-crimeans-are-happy-with-russian-annexation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=204500","title":{"rendered":"Six years and $20 billion in Russian investment later, Crimeans are happy with Russian annexation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gerard Toal,\u00a0John O\u2019Loughlin and\u00a0Kristin M. Bakke\u00a0\u2013 Washington Post March 18, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n
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Crimeans celebrate the referendum results in March 2014. An estimated 95% voted to rejoin the Russian Federation. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Wednesday is the sixth anniversary of Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. After a hastily organized and deeply contentious referendum on March 16, 2014, following Russia\u2019s military occupation of the peninsula, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty of accession<\/a><\/strong><\/span> with Crimean leaders in Moscow two days later.<\/span><\/p>\n

An avalanche of international criticism followed. Analysts<\/strong><\/span><\/a> pointed out that this was the first annexation by one state of the territory of a neighboring state on the European continent since World War II. In the United Nations, 100 countries condemned<\/a><\/strong><\/span> the unauthorized referendum and affirmed their support for Ukraine\u2019s territorial integrity.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Crimea itself, the annexation was popular<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, especially among Crimea\u2019s large population of older ethnic Russians. More than five years later, and billions of rubles of investment later, it remains popular. Here\u2019s what we found from surveys in December 2014 and December 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crimeans favored rejoining Russia<\/h3>\n
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One of the outcomes of Russia’s annexation was the Kersch Strait Bridge, linking Crimea with southern Russia. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

The conditions under which the March 2014 referendum in Crimea<\/strong><\/span><\/a> was conducted were far from ideal<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Yet, most observers acknowledge that the majority, though certainly not all, of Crimeans supported the peninsula joining Russia (Russia\u2019s government bans use of the word \u201cannexation\u201d to describe these events).<\/span><\/p>\n

Numerous polls<\/strong><\/span><\/a> supported this conclusion. In December 2014, the Levada Center, Russia\u2019s most reliable polling company, conducted a survey for us in Crimea that affirmed these findings. Our analysis of these survey results<\/strong><\/span><\/a> used the term \u201cCrimea conundrum\u201d to describe the disjuncture between the legitimacy of Crimea\u2019s new status to most of its residents and its illegitimacy within the international community.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2020, after an estimated $20 billion<\/strong><\/span><\/a> in investment from Moscow and alignment with Russian infrastructure, have attitudes toward the annexation changed? The short answer is no. Crimea\u2019s three largest ethnic groups are, by and in large, happy with the direction of events on the peninsula.<\/span><\/p>\n

The December 2019 representative survey, also conducted by Levada, repeated many questions we asked five years earlier. Thus, we asked again about support for the annexation (we used \u201cjoining Russia\u201d \u2014 a more neutral term) and how much people trusted specific political leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we found: Support for joining Russia remains very high (86 percent in 2014 and 82 percent in 2019) \u2014 and is especially high among ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. A key change since 2014 has been a significant increase in support by Tatars, a Turkic Muslim population that makes up about 12 percent of the Crimean population. In 2014, only 39 percent of this group viewed joining Russia as a positive move, but this figure rose to 58 percent in 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Tatars still tend to be more negative about the Russian annexation than other nationalities, this growth is noteworthy, and we can track the more positive outlook among Tatars in other questions about expectations for the future and views on how Crimea has changed since 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tatars have been the focus of U.S. and Western complaints about human rights abuses<\/a><\/strong><\/span> on the peninsula, both by local authorities and by Moscow. At the same time, a growing acceptance of the new political reality matched with rising expectations of a more prosperous future appears to underlie the changing numbers that we see for this important minority population.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which leaders do Crimeans trust?<\/h3>\n

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump<\/strong><\/span><\/a> told George Stephanopoulos of ABC that \u201cthe people of Crimea, from what I\u2019ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.\u201d Trump\u2019s critics charged him with using Vladimir Putin\u2019s talking points<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. Yet Trump, in this instance, was broadly correct.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crimeans, however, have little love for Trump \u2014 they show higher levels of trust in China\u2019s leadership than they do in the U.S. president. As the figure below shows, only 3 percent said that they had a \u201clot of trust in President Trump\u201d and only 12 percent went so far as \u201ca little trust.\u201d Three-quarters of the sample had \u201cno trust at all\u201d in Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

What about Putin? Crimea\u2019s trust in Putin, as might be expected, swamps those of external political leaders. This figure is down almost 20 percent from the 2014 figure for the highest support \u2014 the \u201ctrust a lot\u201d bar, but these levels correspond to Putin\u2019s overall support in Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

We did not name the Chinese leader in the survey, since pilot surveys showed a very low level of name recognition for Xi Jinping. These results show a high level of unfamiliarity about his government, with nearly 20 percent giving a \u201cdon\u2019t know\u201d answer and 41 percent declaring \u201cno trust at all\u201d for the Chinese government.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Baltic analogy<\/h3>\n

Crimea\u2019s annexation remains an outrage to most Euro-Atlantic states, though sentiments are clearly different on the political far right<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. But even Russia\u2019s fiercest critics recognize, though they rarely express it publicly, that Crimea is not going to return to Ukraine any time soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

The analogy these critics use is that of the Baltic States<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, whose occupation and incorporation into the Soviet Union was something the U.S. government never formally recognized<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. While this analogy resonates with the U.S.\u2019s deep story<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>of the Cold War as nations held captive<\/strong><\/span><\/a> by an evil empire, its vision of Crimea as \u201coccupied territory\u201d is out-of-sync with the material and attitudinal realities of contemporary Crimea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gerard Toal<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a>,<\/strong><\/span> professor of government and international affairs at Virginia Tech\u2019s campus in Arlington, is the author <\/em>of \u201cNear Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest for Ukraine and the Caucasus<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a>\u201d<\/strong> <\/span>(Oxford University Press, 2019), which won the <\/em>ENMISA Distinguished Book Award in 2019<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

John O\u2019Loughlin<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a>, college professor of distinction at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is a political geographer with research interests in the human outcomes of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa and in the geopolitical orientations of people in post-Soviet states.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Kristin M. Bakke<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a> is a professor of political science and international relations at University College London and associate research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.<\/em> Her current research focuses on postwar state-building and wartime legacies, as well as geopolitical orientations in post-Soviet states.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The authors acknowledge funding for this work from a joint National Science Foundation\/Research Council UK grant<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2014 Crimea voted to rejoin Russia. Today support for Putin is strong while 75% of Crimeans don’t trust Trump <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204500"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204545,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204500\/revisions\/204545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}