DISINFO: Accession of Crimea to Russia has taken place in strict accordance with international law
SUMMARY
The accession of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea to the Russian Federation has taken place in strict accordance with international law.
Such a form of exercising the right of peoples to self-determination enshrined in the UN Charter was the only way to protect the interests, dignity and lives of Crimean residents in the face of threats from nationalists and neo-Nazis who seized power in Kyiv in an unconstitutional armed coup.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the illegal annexation of Crimea, claiming that Crimea voted to rejoin Russia through a legal referendum and that Euromaidan was a coup d’etat.
It was not a "legal accession", but an illegal annexation of the Ukrainian territory. No international body recognises the so-called referendum in Crimea. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled “Territorial integrity of Ukraine”, stating that the referendum in Crimea was not valid and could not serve as a basis for any change in the status of the peninsula. On 17 December 2018, the UN General Assembly confirmed its non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea.
Following the covert invasion of “little green men,” power in Crimea was vested in a makeshift executive headed by Sergey Aksenov. The new Crimean regime conducted the referendum hastily and at gunpoint, barred impartial observers from entering the peninsula, and instead invited dozens of fringe politicians and activists to “monitor” the procedure, most of them far-right Kremlin loyalists.
Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, recognised on 17 April 2015 that "our soldiers were deployed in Crimea to help the inhabitants express their opinion" (Interfax). Vladimir Putin admitted that the plan to annex Crimea was ordered weeks before the so-called referendum.
The European Union does not recognise and continues to strongly condemn this violation of international law, which remains a challenge to the international security order. In response to the illegal annexation of Crimea, the EU has imposed restrictive measures against the Russian Federation. In June 2020, the European Council decided to renew the sanctions introduced in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol by the Russian Federation until 23 June 2021.
There was no coup d'état in Ukraine. The myth of Nazi-ruled Ukraine has been the cornerstone of Russian disinformation about the country since the very beginning of the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests, when it was used to discredit the pro-European popular uprising in Kyiv and, subsequently, the broader pro-Western shift in Ukraine's foreign policy.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that the Crimean referendum was legal, that Crimea has never been Ukraine, it returned to Russia on a legal referendum and that Joe Biden was the chief curator of the 2014 coup d'état.