By Galina Korol | 2024-04-02

KYIV -- Russian lawmakers last month submitted a bill attempting to rewrite the history of Crimea 70 years after the USSR transferred it from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine.

The authors of the bill, published March 11, propose recognizing the February 1954 handover of Crimea as "a political crime" made "in violation of the constitutions of the [Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic] and the USSR" and "without taking into account the will of the Russian people," according to independent Russian news site Meduza.

"The draft law also explicitly states that it aims to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty over the peninsula and make it 'much more difficult' for Kyiv's allies to support its demands for the return of Crimea to Ukraine," Meduza wrote.

The bill's sponsors contend that "the handover of Crimea must be recognized as illegal not only 'out of concern for setting the historical record straight' but also to 'dislodge the foundation of the propaganda by the Ukrainian government, which is asserting that Crimea was 'occupied ' in 2014,'" it continued.

'Alternate reality'

The authors of the bill are Sergei Tsekov, a Crimean pro-Russian politician who is now a Russian senator and is on a Ukrainian wanted list, and Konstantin Zatulin, a member of the Russian State Duma who is also wanted by Ukraine.

Zatulin has sought to annul the 1954 transfer on at least three occasions, most recently in February, according to the news outlet SOTA.

"We're very familiar with the Gauleiters whom Moscow appointed to govern Crimea... There's no limit to their ridiculousness," Refat Chubarov, chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, said in a March 18 interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Krym.Realii (Crimea Realities), equating the Russian appointees to Nazi officials.

In a separate interview, Chubarov called the Kremlin's attempts to justify the 1954 transfer of Crimea to Ukraine "meaningless."

"The Russian government lacks the confidence that it will be able to hold on to the peninsula," he told the Ukrainian TV channel FREEDOM on March 13.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called the bill a "despicable attempt by the Russian dictatorship to legitimize its gross violations of international law."

"The Russian government ... can continue its propaganda, including under the guise of lawmaking, as long as it wants, but this will not change the reality recognized by the international community: Crimea is Ukraine," it said in a statement March 12.

Moscow's repeated attempts to re-imagine Crimea through the lens of history are based on an "alternate reality," said Yaroslav Chornohor, director of the Russia and Belarus studies program of the independent think tank Ukrainian Prism.

"Russia can concoct anything it wants. ... they are living in their own alternate reality where they can pass any laws that in their minds justify their actions," he told Kontur.

"In fact, legally [the bill on revoking the handover of Crimea] is meaningless because for starters, this decision was made in the Soviet Union, while the Soviet Union has already collapsed," he said.

Russia's Crimea problem

"Crimea has been bothering the Russians since the Soviet Union fell apart," said Serhii Hromenko, a historian and analyst at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future.

"In 1977, Soviet Ukraine and Russia adopted new constitutions and Crimea's status was finalized in them all at once," Hromenko said. "So after that, it's just laughable to say the transfer was illegitimate."

Even Vladimir Putin, prime minister at the time, acknowledged this fact in a 2008 interview with German television company ARD.

When asked whether Crimea and Sevastopol could be Moscow's "next target," Putin said "the question reeks of provocation."

"Crimea is not disputed territory ... Russia recognized the borders of modern Ukraine long ago," RIA Novosti on August 30, 2008, quoted Putin as saying.

Bill could backfire

If the Russian parliament annuls the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, it could inadvertently raise questions about Russian territory, including territory it stole during its invasion of Ukraine, Petro Oleshchuk, a political analyst at the think tank United Ukraine, told Kontur.

"What will happen to the other territory they seized and allegedly have also already annexed? Doesn't their 'annexation' need 'additional evidence?'" he said.

"Historical arguments are always pointless because for every such argument you can offer a counterargument that has just as much historical weight. But none of that can do anything to silence the club of [Putin] bunker reenactors," Oleshchuk said.

Trying to annul the transfer of Crimea to Soviet Ukraine in 1954 is as difficult to explain from a legal perspective as from a logical one, said Yaroslav Kuts of Kyiv, a lawyer and director of the law firm A2KT.

The Kremlin is tying itself up in legalistic knots, he said.

"So it's like this: first they stole, then they legitimized, then it turned out that the thing they stole actually belonged to them? From the legal angle, all of this will look very strange and obvious," Kuts said.

The international community already voiced its opinion on the subject a decade ago, he added, referring to its reaction after Russia's illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea.

"Crimea is Ukraine, and in fact Crimea was snatched by Russia, and this is indisputable, as the 1991 borders show," Kuts said.