«The best way to celebrate February 26 is for the West to recommit itself to supporting Ukraine’s fight». To Day of Resistance to Occupation of Crimea and Sevastopol

February 26 marks the Day of Resistance to the Occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol, a day honoring the Ukrainian people’s unrelenting struggle against Russian imperialism. Declared by President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2020, this day commemorates the 2014 rally in Simferopol by thousands of Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainian citizens in defense of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, in the immediate aftermath of Euromaidan.

Following the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych and his replacement with a democratic government, pro-Russian elements in what was then the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (ARC), as well as in the separately administered City of Sevastopol, began to agitate for the peninsula to secede from Ukraine and be absorbed into Russia. In this fevered atmosphere, the Supreme Council of the ARC called a session to (ostensibly) discuss separation from Kyiv – despite unilateral secession being illegal under Ukrainian law – prompting thousands of people to rally in front of the Supreme Council building to defend Ukraine. However, although the parliamentary session was disrupted, the pro-Ukrainian side’s victory was a bitter one: just one day later, Vladimir Putin sent its now-notorious “little green men” to occupy Crimea. Within the following month, Russia would hold a sham referendum and annex the peninsula outright.

The February 26 rally was, therefore, the first act of organized resistance against Russia by the people of Crimea since 1991. Although Putin carried out his already planned invasion, the protesters effectively denied him the unequivocal triumph he had desired: their tenacity and courage proved to the world that the Crimean population did not support acceding to Russia, no matter how many rigged votes Moscow might hold. By preventing the Supreme Council from handing Crimea to Putin and thus necessitating him to invade, the pro-Ukraine activists ensured the annexation began a process that would alienate Russia from the West, and cost Russia the only reliable partners it might have had.

Ten years of sanctions and international isolation later, Russia has regressed into a Soviet-style closed-off economy smaller than California’s, that is essentially dependent on massive military spending. Russian diplomacy has become limited to transactional relations with other dictatorships, which it will not be able to count on in times of need. Putin may not see such a situation as all bad when it comes to his domestic standing, but these consequences guarantee that, no matter how Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine ends, it will not be able to eliminate Ukraine as a state, nor the Ukrainians as a people. Therefore, Ukraine will remain in a position to keep fighting to reclaim all its land, as long as it has the will to do so. In this sense, Russia has already lost its war.

Not only does February 26 mark the beginning of Crimean resistance against Russia, this day also represents its continued life. Despite seemingly impossible odds, civic activists in Crimea have refused to submit to Russian occupation. According to Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets, Crimean occupation authorities have detained at least 180 people for political reasons since 2014. That list includes filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who was eventually released to Ukraine in a prisoner swap, following a global campaign in which the Center for Civil Liberties played a leading role. In particular, Crimean Tatar activists have been especially visible in the resistance movement, both on February 26, 2014 and since; the vast majority of the 180 detainees are of Crimean Tatar background. Practically all Crimean Tatar leaders remaining on the peninsula have been arrested; just last year, activist Dzhemil Gafarov died in a Russian pretrial detention center after being refused medical attention. This persecution is only the latest chapter in a tragic history, punctuated by the 1944 mass deportation of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin. Only after a decades-long advocacy campaign would Soviet authorities allow their return.

For Ukraine’s friends abroad, this day should be an opportunity to remember just why the annexation of Crimea was so shocking to all law-abiding nations, and what it reveals about the threat Russia poses to world peace. After World War II, the nations of the world committed themselves to an international order where annexing another country’s territory by force is taboo. Under Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, “all Members shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Post-colonial states in Africa and Asia for the most part abided by this principle, even as they had to contend with artificial and unworkable borders; when Sadaam Hussein tried to annex Kuwait based on historic irredentist claims, an international coalition went to war to stop him. Putin’s seizure of Crimea was thus the first instance of one country annexing another’s territory in modern times. Not only that, but it was in direct violation of Russia’s promises in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, whereby Moscow recognized Ukraine’s 1991 borders in exchange for the transfer of Soviet-era nuclear weapons. There could be no clearer sign that Russia had no intention of following international law or basic international norms, and that its word could not be trusted. Ukraine continues to pay the price for the West’s failure to fully appreciate that lesson a decade ago, but it is not too late to learn it now.

While the recent European Union package providing $54 billion in aid to Ukraine (albeit for nonmilitary purposes) is welcome news, it is imperative for the US to step up and get its latest Ukraine aid bill through Congress, using a discharge petition to force a vote in the House of Representatives if necessary. Furthermore, President Joe Biden’s administration must make more extensive use of its options to help Ukraine without passing legislation, such as by transferring confiscated Russian funds. Biden’s announcement that over 500 new sanctions are being placed on Russia in response to the murder of prisoner Alexei Navalny is commendable, but calls into question why the government waited until now to take these steps, when they must have been at its disposal much earlier. Since Putin clearly will not be deterred, the rationale for sanctions should be to cripple the Russian war machine, and the national economy that sustains it, as much and as fast as possible. The best way to celebrate February 26, and to honor the people of Crimea living under foreign occupation, is for the West to recommit itself to supporting Ukraine’s fight.

Author: Benjamin Reicher, Pomona College, United States of America