As of 30 March 2020, there were five confirmed cases in Sevastopol.


On March 13, 1986, the American cruiser and the destroyer , claiming the right of innocent passage, entered Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea near the southern Crimean Peninsula. The warships passed within six miles of the Soviet coast, where they were soon confronted by the Soviet frigate . The commander of "Ladny" notified the U.S. warships that they had violated Soviet territorial waters and requested that they depart immediately. The U.S. warships confirmed receipt of the warning but did not change course. The Soviet command placed its Black Sea air and naval forces on combat readiness and dispatched border guard vessels and naval aircraft to intercept the U.S. warships.


"Yorktown" and "Caron" stayed in Soviet territorial waters for roughly two hours. The situation de-escalated when the U.S. ships left; diplomatic repercussions continued for several weeks.


On March 10, 1986, the USS "Yorktown", accompanied by the USS "Caron", entered the Black Sea via the Turkish Straits. Their entrance was observed by a , "Ladny", which was ordered to continue observation. On March 13 with their main armament pointed in the direction of the Soviet coastline, "Yorktown" and "Caron" entered the Soviet territorial waters and sailed west along the southern Crimean Peninsula, approaching within six miles of the coast. Having entered from the direction of Feodosia, the US warships sailed for two hours and 21 minutes. Both American warships also confronted the Soviet border guard vessels "Dozorny" and "Izmail". The commander of "Ladny", Captain Zhuravlev, reported the incident to his superiors.


According to "Izvestiya" editor Vyacheslav Lukashin, at the time of the incident the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy Vladimir Chernavin knew that the order for the U.S. warships to proceed into Soviet waters was given by the U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger with the consent of President Ronald Reagan.


The Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs held two press conferences concerning the incident. The U.S. charge d'affaires, Richard Combs, was summoned to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs to receive the Soviet protest. The Soviet Union stated that the U.S. violation of its territorial waters "was of a demonstrative, defiant nature and pursued clearly provocative aims". Vladimir Chernavin affirmed that "the innocent passage of foreign warships through the territorial waters of the USSR is permitted only in specially authorized coastal areas which have been announced by the Soviet government [and] there are no such areas in the Black Sea off the coast of the Soviet Union".


In the subsequent incident of 1988, the same USS "Yorktown" and USS "Caron", while claiming innocent passage again in the Black Sea, were bumped by the Soviet vessels.


The Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic () was an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Soviet republic situated in the Crimean Peninsula part of Soviet Russia. The republic was established by Bolsheviks Jan Miller and Anton Slutsky who previously participated in the Petrograd Bolshevik Revolution.


It existed from 19 March to 30 April 1918 and was recognised by the Russian SFSR.


Following the 1917 October Revolution, the ethnic Tatar government proclaimed the Crimean People's Republic on 13 December 1917. In January 1918, however, it was overrun by Bolshevik forces. In Simferopol a guberniya revkom was established which, however, did possess sufficient authority as the military center continued to be located in Sevastopol.


To liquidate this dual authority on February 10–12, 1918 there took place a conference of revkoms at which participated 44 delegates (including 27 Bolsheviks). The conference was later recognized as an extraordinary congress of the Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. At the meeting, it was decided to create 14 commissariats. The Congress also confirmed the disbandment of the Council of People's Representatives and Qurultay. The local administration was transformed into a system of soviets replacing the old system of duma and land administration (zemstvo). The 14-member Central Executive Committee was established as the central administration of guberniya which consisted of 10 Bolsheviks; the rest were Left SRs. Jan Miller (Bolshevik) was appointed as chairman of the committee.


The Congress, with 23 votes "for" and 20 "against", decided that the administrative center would be in Simferopol rather than Sevastopol, while the military center, which was subordinated to the central executive committee, was left in Sevastopol. The major administrative and political issues were to be decided by laws adopted at the 3rd All-Russian Congress of Soviets. The Taurida congress also approved the adoption of drastic measures for grain procurement allowing requisition and the use of armed force sending bread to industrial areas and the army.


A few weeks later, on 19 and 21 March, decrees of the Taurida Central Executive Committee (CEC) issued in Simferopol established the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic on the same territory. Areas of Taurida that lay north of Crimea were also claimed by the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic.


With the assistance of the German Empire, the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic was quickly overrun by forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic during the Crimean Offensive. By the end of April 1918, the majority of the CEC and the Council of People's Commissars, including council leader Anton Slutsky and local Bolshevik chief Jan Tarwacki, were arrested and shot in Alushta by insurgent Crimean Tatars. On 30 April, the Republic was abolished.


Following the invasion, a German-protected Crimean Regional Government was established under Maciej Sulkiewicz and, later, Solomon Krym. After the defeat of the White Movement's Volunteer Army and the reassertion of Soviet control in late 1920, the lands of the former Republic were passed to the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic under the Russian SFSR.


The South Russian Government () was a Russian White movement government established by Armed Forces of South Russia commander Anton Denikin in Novorossiysk, Kuban, in March 1920 during the Russian Civil War.


On 27 March 1920, Denikin was forced to evacuate Novorossiysk for Crimea, which the Whites had controlled since June 1919. However, the slipshod retreat discredited Denikin and he stepped down, succeeded by General Pyotr Wrangel, who was elected new Commander-in-Chief of the White Army by military council. The South Russian Government was dissolved on 30 March in Feodosiya. Wrangel set up a new Government of South Russia in Sevastopol in April.


This attempted establishment of civil government by the White authorities was a recognition that previous neglect of civil administration by the General Command of the Armed Forces of South Russia had cost the Whites civilian support.


Seraya Shapshal or "His Excellency Hajji Seraya Khan Shapshal " (Karaim: Серая Бен Мордехай Шапшал; ; ; ) (1873–1961) was a hakham and leader of the Crimean and then the Polish and Lithuanian Crimean Karaites (Karaim) community.


Shapshal was born in Bahçesaray, Crimea and studied at St. Petersburg University, where he was graduated in philology and oriental languages. During his studies he became a strong adopter of Russian orientalist V.Grigorjev's theory about the Khazarian origin of the Crimean Karaites. Immediately after his graduation at 1901 he was invited to serve as the personal tutor of the Iranian crown prince, Mohammad Ali Shah, and became a minister in the Persian government in 1907 (actually he was a Russian spy). In 1911 he returned to Crimea and became Chief Hakham of the Crimean Karaites communities in Crimea.


From 1920 to 1927 he lived in Istanbul. Here he was active in the pan-Turkic movement. In 1927 while living in Turkey he was elected the head of the Karaims in Poland and in 1928 moved to Wilno.


He denied any connection between Crimean Karaites and Rabbinic Jews. Shapshal is the founder of the Crimean Karaite religion and historical doctrine of Dejudaization.


Under this doctrine, he changed the traditional title of "Hacham" to "Gahan" ("Ḥakhan"), which in his opinion goes back to the Khazarian word "Khagan". In the mid 1930s, he began to create a theory of the Altai-Turkic origin of the Karaims and the pagan roots of the Karaite religious teaching (worship of sacred oaks, polytheism, led by the god Tengri, the Sacrifice). Shapshal's doctrine is still a topic of critical research and public debate.


He made a number of reforms aimed at the Turkification of the Karaims and the eradication of Jewish elements from their culture and language. He issued an order abolishing the teaching of Hebrew in Karaite schools, replaced names of Jewish holidays and months with the Turkic ones, renamed "Gahan" the position of "Hacham" in consonance with the word "khan". According to Shapshal, the doctrine of Anan ben David was close to early Christianity, and Karaites had believed for centuries in Jesus and Mohammed as prophets. Crimean Karaites adopted the law of Moses, but continued to adhere to the ancient Turkic pagan beliefs.


Between the efforts to impose a Khazarian origin for the Crimean Karaites was the "militarization" process of their history originated in the 20th century's inter-war Poland: the trend of representing the Karaite population of Eastern Europe as a nation of warriors.


Shapshal was one of the initiators of this process.


In 1945 he formally abdicated from Karaite Gahan post, submitting a statement to the Commissioner for Religious Affairs of the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR, and got a position as a researcher at the Institute of History of the Soviet-dominated Lithuanian Academy of Sciences


He co-authored a Karaim–Russian–Polish dictionary (published in 1974) and wrote a number of articles on the Crimean Karaites.


Using his position he continued to promote his ideas, including forgery of some evidences regarding the military past of Crimean Karaites, publishing the articles about his "discoveries" in the Soviet Union's leading academic journals.


Recent studies on Shapshal's archive have shown that his drafts include several versions of the "original" documents texts, evidencing forgery. In spite of that, Shapshal's ideas about Karaim warriors were adopted widely in USSR and even abroad.


Thus in Trakai, modern Lithuania, visitors are often told that Karaim warriors were guards of Trakai Castles.


In 1997, a commemorative coin in denominations of 50 LTL was issued in honor of the 600th anniversary of the Tatars and Crimean Karaites in Lithuania. The coin includes the image of Tatar and Karaim warriors.


Some of his works (including "History of the Karaims") remain unpublished. Part of his collections and books are kept in National Library of Lithuania, the other in a small museum in the old kenesa of Trakai, where he died in 1961.


Some of his descendants settled in Israel during the 1990s under the Law of Return.


KaZantip, also known simply as "Z", was an electronic dance music festival that took place every year from 1992 to 2013 on the Crimean Peninsula; from 2002 to 2013, it was held in the village of Mysovoye, near Shchelkino. The entrance ticket is called a "viZa". It takes place for 2–3 weeks in August, and about 100,000 "paradiZers" visit each year. There is a cult of orange-coloured fashion and yellow suitcases associated with the festival.


In 2014, the festival took place outside of Crimea for the first time ever, in Anaklia, Georgia. In 2015, it was to be held 18–28 February on the Koh Puos Island in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, but was cancelled at the last minute by the local authorities.


The 2014 edition, called "Z22", took place in Anaklia, Georgia, due to the politically unstable situation in Crimea at the time. The Anaklia festival proved controversial from the start, as members of the Georgian Orthodox Church protested the event due to fears of drugs and nudity at the festival. The head of Georgia's National Tourism Administration also publicly claimed that he was fired over a dispute with the church about the 2014 festival's taking place in Anaklia.


There is a special celebration called "Mayovka", or "Happiness Parade", which, as a rule, is held from the end of April to the beginning of May. This is the Z-national holiday, dedicated to spring, friendship, and happiness. During these days, Z-people dance, take part in a Happiness Parade, show their happiness to each other, and prepare for the big summer events.


KaZantip presents itself as a "virtual republic", with over 300 DJs on more than 14 dance floors, playing 21 hours per day. The republic is held on a piece of land covering 60,000 square metres (15 acres).


DJs performing during KaZantip 2010 were (among others) Carl Cox, Hybrid, Marco Carola, Oliver Huntemann, DJ URI (Boston, USA), Armin Van Buuren, Josh Wink, and Seba. Season 2011 (also called "Z19") brought Pendulum as an opening headliner, Leeroy Thornhill (ex-keyboardist from The Prodigy) as one of the guest DJs, as well as John B, Marc Romboy, Richie Hawtin, Ricardo Villalobos, and many more.


The 2012 lineup included Armin Van Buuren (Leiden, Netherlands), DJ URI (Boston, USA), Tiësto (Breda, Netherlands), Carl Cox (Oldham, England), Josh Wink (Philadelphia, USA), Skrillex (Los Angeles, USA), Rusko (Wheldrake, England), Benny Benassi (Reggio Emilia, Italy), Vika Jigulina (Timișoara, Romania), David Guetta (Paris, France), and quite a few more.


In 2013, there were performances by Bobina, Ferry Corsten, Markus Schulz, Gabriel & Dresden, Maceo Plex, Adam Freeland, and many more.


The Italians of Crimea are a small ethnic minority residing in Crimea.


Italians have populated some areas of Ukraine and Crimea since the time of the Roman Empire, but also during the era of the Republic of Genoa and the Republic of Venice. Some sources affirm that at the end of the 18th century, 10% of the population of Odessa was Italian.


In 1783, 25,000 Italians immigrated to Crimea, which had been recently annexed by the Russian Empire. In 1830 and in 1870, two distinct migrations arrived in Kerch from the cities of Trani, Bisceglie and Molfetta. These migrants were peasants and sailors, attracted by the job opportunities in the local Crimean seaports and by the possibility to cultivate the nearly unexploited and fertile Crimean lands. Italian general and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi worked as a sailor at least twice in the region of Odessa, between 1825 and 1833. A later wave of Italians came at the beginning of 20th century, invited by Imperial Russian authorities to develop agricultural activities, mainly grape cultivation.


In Kerch, the Italians of Crimea built a Roman Catholic church, still known locally as the Church of the Italians. From Kerch, the Italians moved to Feodosiya (the former Genoese colony of Caffa), Simferopol, Mariupol and to other Imperial Russian seaports of the Black Sea, such as Batumi and Novorossiysk.


In the beginning of the 20th century, the Italian community was numerous enough to have a primary school and a library. The local newspaper at that time, "Kerčenskij Rabocij," used to publish articles in Italian. According to information contained in the Ukrainian statistics archives, the Italians of Kerch accounted for 1.8% of the population in 1897 and 2%, or 3,000 people in 1921 to 2%.


After the October Revolution, many Italians were considered foreigners and were seen as an enemy. They therefore faced much repression.


Between 1920 and 1930, many anti-fascist Italians seeking asylum in Soviet Union were sent from Moscow to Kerch to organise the local Italian community. According to the plans of Soviet collective farming, the Italians were forced to create a kolkhoz, named Sacco e Vanzetti for the two Italian anarchists of the same name. Those refusing to comply were forced to leave or were deported. According to 1933 census, the number of Italians in the region of Kerch had already dropped by 1.3%.


Between 1936 and 1938, during Stalin's Great Purge, many Italians were accused of espionage and were arrested, tortured, deported or executed. In 1939, more Italians fled once their Italian citizenship was at risk of being lost, after the Soviet Union imposed its own citizenship onto those of foreign origin. After this, 1,100 Italians were left in Kirch and smaller amounts in other communities.


In 1942, when the Wehrmacht conquered Ukraine and Crimea, the Italian ethnic minority was deported to Asia with the same modalities of the Volga Germans, who had already been deported in August of 1941. The entire Italian community, including the anti-fascists who settled in the 1920s, was gathered and sent to Kazakhstan in sealed trains. The trip started on January 29, 1942 and lasted until March, when the convoy arrived in Atbasar and the prisoners were moved to labour camps. Half of the convoy (including all the children) died during the trip, as well as many others during the detention in the camps.


The few survivors were allowed to return to Kerch under Nikita Khrushchev's regency. Some families dispersed in other territories of Soviet Union, mainly in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.


The descendants of the survival Italians of Crimea account today to 300 people, mainly resident in Kerch. As of 2012, the deportation of the Italians of Crimea is still not recognised by the Ukrainian Government.


There was a territorial dispute over the ownership of the Tuzla Island between Ukraine and Russia in October 2003. The Russian authorities claimed the 1954 transfer of Crimea to Ukraine had only included the continental parts of Crimea, even though the Tuzla Island had been administratively part of Crimea since 1941. Since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea Tuzla island is a de facto part of Russia and forms a foundation for the Crimean Bridge.


On October 21, 2003, the Border Service of Ukraine arrested the Russian tugboat "Truzhenik" that crossed the State Border of Ukraine and conducted photo and video surveillance of the island. After the incident, a respective protocol was created and the ship was handed over to the Russian border authorities. On October 23, 2003, the Ukrainian parliament issued a resolution "to eliminate a threat to the territorial integrity of Ukraine that appeared as a result of dam construction by the Russian Federation in the strait of Kerch". A provisional special parliamentary commission was created to investigate the case more thoroughly.


On October 30–31, 2003, talks started between Ukraine and Russia that led to suspension of the construction of the dam. Due to the conflict, on December 2, 2003, a border patrol station of Ukraine was installed on the island. On December 5, 2003, the Cabinet of Ukraine issued Order #735p in regards to urgent measures to save the island. On July 4, 2004, the Cabinet of Ukraine issued Order #429p, which foresaw the construction of shore reinforcement structures and population transfer from the flooding territories.


Following the 2003 conflict, the Supreme Council of Crimea ordered the establishment of a new settlement on the island. However, on September 6, 2006, the Kerch city administration refused to create such a settlement, as it conflicted with the administrative-territorial composition of the city.


The distance to the unfinished dam that stretches from the Taman peninsula is about , with water depth along the former shallow no more that .


Disputes about right of passage were resolved by a 2003 bilateral agreement on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the strait of Kerch, which made these water bodies shared internal waters of both countries, but new tensions arose after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea.


The Crimea Operation took place in April 1918 when Crimea was cleared of Bolsheviks by Ukrainian troops and the Imperial German Army.


With the assistance of the German Empire, the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic was quickly overrun by forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic under command of Petro Bolbochan during the Crimean Offensive. By the end of April 1918, the majority of the members of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, including council leader Anton Slutsky and local Bolshevik chief Jan Tarwacki, were arrested and shot in Alushta by insurgent Crimean Tatars, partially in reaction to the prior killing of Tatar independence leader Noman Çelebicihan by the Bolsheviks earlier in February. On 30 April, the Taurida SSR was abolished.


The goal of both Ukrainians and Germans was to get control over the Black Sea Fleet, anchored in Sevastopol. Former Chief of Staff Mikhail Sablin raised the colours of the Ukrainian National Republic on 29 April 1918. and moved a portion of his fleet (two battleships and fourteen destroyers) to Novorossiysk in order to save it from capture by the Germans. He was ordered to scuttle his ships by Lenin but refused to do so.


Most ships returned to Sevastopol, where they first came under German control, until November 1918 when they came under Allied control who later gave the ships to the White Russians (See Wrangel's fleet).


The capture of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea on 27 February 2014 is an episode of the Crimean crisis. The Crimean Prosecutor's Office considered the incident as a terrorist attack.


On February 25, a pro-Russian rally organized by the Crimean Front and Cossack organizations was held under the building of the Crimean Verkhovna Rada. The protesters shouted pro-Russian slogans and demanded separation from Ukraine by holding a referendum. Before the protesters came the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of the ARC Volodymyr Konstantinov, announcing the extraordinary session of February 26. The media reported that a question about the withdrawal of the Crimea from Ukraine could be put to the session, but Konstantinov denied such rumors, calling it the provocation of the "Makeevka team in the Crimean government".


On February 26, two events took place in parallel by the walls of the ARC Verkhovna Rada: a pro-Ukrainian rally organized by the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, which gathered up to 10 thousand participants, and a pro-Russian rally of about 700 people, initiated by the party "Rus unity". Due to unsatisfactory security measures taken by law enforcement officers, there were fights between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian rally participants, resulting in the death of 2 people of the pro-Russian rally. The pro-Russian rally was pushed to the inner court of the Crimean Verkhovna Rada, and scheduled the day before parliament's session was canceled.


At 8:30, the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Crimea Anatolii Mohyliov made an appeal to the inhabitants of Crimea, in which he informed them about the capture of the Verkhovna Rada of the ARC by unknown persons numbering about 50. At 9 o'clock Anatolii Mohyliov announced talks, but they did not have any result, because, according to Mohyliov, the unknown people refused to speak.


Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the then head of the SBU, believes that there was no forceful capture of the ARC Verkhovna Rada, as the local Crimean authorities, including the police, voluntarily transferred control over the building and weapons.


Abraham (Avraham) ben Samuel Firkovich (Hebrew אברהם בן שמואל - "Avraham ben Shmuel"; Karayce: Аврагъам Фиркович - "Avragham Firkovich") (1786–1874) was a famous Karaite writer and archaeologist, collector of ancient manuscripts, and a Karaite Hakham. He was born in Lutsk, Volhynia, then lived in Lithuania, and finally settled in Çufut Qale, Crimea. Gabriel Firkovich of Troki was his son-in-law.


Firkovich collected a vast number of Hebrew, Arabic and Samaritan manuscripts during his many travels in his search for evidence concerning the traditions of his people. These included thousands of Jewish documents from throughout the Russian Empire in what became known as the First Firkovich Collection. His Second Collection contains material collected from the Near East. His visit took place about thirty years before Solomon Schechter's more famous trip to Egypt. This "Second Firkovich Collection" contains 13,700 items and is of incredible value.


As a result of his research he became focused on the origin of the ancestors of the Crimean Karaites who he claimed had arrived in Crimea before the common era. The Karaites, therefore, could not be seen as culpable for the crucifixion of Jesus because they had settled in Crimea at such an early date. His theories persuaded the Russian imperial court that Crimean Karaites cannot be accused in Jesus' Crucifixion and they were excluded from the restrictive measures against Jews. Many of his findings were disputed immediately after his death, and despite their important value there is still controversy over many of the documents he collected.


The Russian National Library purchased the Second Firkovich Collection in 1876, a little more than a year after Firkovich's death.


Among the treasures in the Firkovich collection is a manuscript of the "Garden of Metaphors", an aesthetic appreciation of Biblical literature written in Judeo-Arabic by one of the greatest of the Sephardi poets, Moses ibn Ezra.


Firkovich's life and works are of great importance to Karaite history and literature. His collections at the Russian National Library are important to biblical scholars and to historians, especially those of the Karaite and Samaritan communities. Controversy continues regarding his alleged discoveries and the reliability of his works.


Firkovich's chief work is his "Abne Zikkaron," containing the texts of inscriptions discovered by him (Wilna, 1872). It is preceded by a lengthy account of his travels to Daghestan, characterized by Strack as a mixture of truth and fiction. His other works are "Ḥotam Toknit," antirabbinical polemics, appended to his edition of the "Mibḥar Yesharim" by Aaron the elder (Koslov, 1835); "Ebel Kabod," on the death of his wife and of his son Jacob (Odessa, 1866); and "Bene Reshef", essays and poems, published by Peretz Smolenskin (Vienna, 1871).


Abraham Firkovich collected several distinct collections of documents. In sum the Firkovich collection contains approximately 15,000 items, of which many are fragmentary. His collections represent 'by far the greatest repository of all Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts' and are today held in the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg, while microfilm reproductions of all the manuscripts are held in the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew manuscripts at the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem.


This collection contains material from the Crimea and the Caucasus. It was largely collected between 1839 and 1840, but with additions from Firkovich as late as 1852. It was originally owned by the Odessa Society of History and Antiquities and was stored in the Odessa museum.


Some of these documents deteriorated due to chemical treatment performed by Firkovich. Other documents which were suspected forgeries disappeared; Firkovich claimed they had been stolen. The collection was moved to the Imperial Public Library in 1863.


In 1844 the Russian historian Arist Kunik, a leading anti-Normanist, and Bezalel Stern, an influential Russian Maskil, would study and partly describe the discovery.


Briefly stated, the discoveries include the major part of the manuscripts described in Pinner's "Prospectus der Odessaer Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Alterthum Gehörenden Aeltesten Hebräischen und Rabbinischen Manuscripte" (Odessa, 1845), a rather rare work which is briefly described in "Literaturblatt des Orients" for 1847, No. 2. These manuscripts consist of:


Contains material from the Crimea and the Caucasus largely collected between 1839 and 1841. It was purchased by the Imperial Public Library in 1862.


Another collection of 317 Samaritan manuscripts, acquired in Nablus, arrived in the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy in 1867 (see Fürst, "Geschichte des Karäerthums", iii. pp. 176, Leipsic, 1869)


In 1864 Firkovich acquired a large collection of Samaritan documents in Nablus. He sold the documents to the Imperial Public Library in 1870. In sum the collection contains 1,350 items.


Contains material collected from the Near East. The material was collected between 1863 and 1865. Firkovich collected in Jerusalem, Aleppo and also in Cairo. Firkovich concealed where he obtained the documents. He possibly collected from the Cairo Geniza thirty years before Solomon Schechter discovered it. Firkovich sold this collection to the Imperial Public Library in 1873.


Firkovich has come to be regarded as a forger, acting in support of Karaite causes. He wished to eliminate any connection between Rabbinic Judaism and the Karaites by declaring that the Karaites were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. Firkovich successfully petitioned the Russian government to exempt the Karaites from anti-Jewish laws on the grounds that Karaites had immigrated to Europe before the crucifixion of Jesus and thus could not be held responsible for his death.


In contradiction, Firkovich's most sympathetic critic, Chwolson, gives as a résumé of his belief, after considering all controversies, that Firkovich succeeded in demonstrating that some of the Jewish tombstones from Chufut-Kale date back to the seventh century, and that seemingly modern forms of eulogy and the method of counting after the era of creation were in vogue among Jews much earlier than had been hitherto suspected. Chwolson alone defended him, but he also was forced to admit that in some cases Firkovich had resorted to forgery. In his "Corpus Inscriptionum Hebraicarum" (St. Petersburg, 1882; Russian ed., ib. 1884) Chwolson attempts to prove that the Firkovich collection, especially the epitaphs from tombstones, contains much which is genuine.


In 1980, V. V. Lebedev investigated the Firkovich collection and came to the conclusion that forgery cannot be attributed to Firkovich, but rather it was done by the previous owners, in an attempt to increase the price of the manuscripts.


For many years the manuscripts were not available to Western scholars. The extent of Firkovich’s forgeries is still being determined. Firkovich’s materials require careful examination on a case by case basis. His collection remains of great value to scholars of Jewish studies.


Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation


The Crimean Peninsula, north of the Black Sea in Eastern Europe, was annexed by the Russian Federation between February and March 2014 and since then has been administered as two Russian federal subjects—the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol. The annexation from Ukraine followed a Russian military intervention in Crimea that took place in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and was part of wider unrest across southern and eastern Ukraine.


On 22–23 February 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin convened an all-night meeting with security service chiefs to discuss the extrication of the deposed Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. At the end of the meeting, Putin remarked that "we must start working on returning Crimea to Russia". On 23 February, pro-Russian demonstrations were held in the Crimean city of Sevastopol. On 27 February, masked Russian troops without insignia took over the Supreme Council (parliament) of Crimea and captured strategic sites across Crimea, which led to the installation of the pro-Russian Aksyonov government in Crimea, the conducting of the Crimean status referendum and the declaration of Crimea's independence on 16 March 2014. Russia formally incorporated Crimea as two federal subjects of the Russian Federation on 18 March 2014.


The Russian Federation opposes the "annexation" label, with Putin defending the referendum as complying with the principle of self-determination of peoples. In July 2015, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that Crimea had been fully integrated into Russia.


Crimea became part of the Russian Empire in 1783, when the Crimean Khanate was annexed, then became part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic until 1954. During the first stages of the Russian Civil War there were a series of short-lived independent governments (Crimean People's Republic, Crimean Regional Government, Crimean SSR) but they were followed by White Russian governments (General Command of the Armed Forces of South Russia and later South Russian Government). In October 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Russian SFSR was instituted. After the Second World War and the subsequent deportation of all of the indigenous Crimean Tatars, the Crimean ASSR was stripped of its autonomy in 1946 and was downgraded to the status of an oblast of the Russian SFSR.


In 1954, the Crimean Oblast was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's union with Russia.


In 1989, under Gorbachev's perestroika, the Supreme Soviet declared that the deportation of the Crimean Tatars under Stalin had been illegal, and the mostly Muslim ethnic group was allowed to return to Crimea.


In 1990, the Soviet of the Crimean Oblast proposed the restoration of the Crimean ASSR. The oblast conducted a referendum in 1991, which asked whether Crimea should be elevated into a signatory of the New Union Treaty (that is, became a union republic on its own). By that time, though, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was well underway. The Crimean ASSR was restored for less than a year as part of Soviet Ukraine before Ukrainian independence. Newly independent Ukraine maintained Crimea's autonomous status, while the Supreme Council of Crimea affirmed the peninsula's "sovereignty" as a part of Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities limited Crimean autonomy in 1995.


In September 2008, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko accused Russia of giving out Russian passports to the population in Crimea and described it as a "real problem" given Russia's declared policy of military intervention abroad to protect Russian citizens.


On 24 August 2009, anti-Ukrainian demonstrations were held in Crimea by ethnic Russian residents. Sergei Tsekov (of the Russian Bloc and then deputy speaker of the Crimean parliament) said then that he hoped that Russia would treat Crimea the same way as it had treated South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Crimea is populated by an ethnic Russian majority and a minority of both ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, and thus demographically possessed one of Ukraine's largest ethnic Russian populations.


Already in 2011, some analysts speculated that the Russian government had irredentist plans:


The Euromaidan protest movement began in Kiev in late November 2013 after President Viktor Yanukovych, of the Party of Regions, failed to sign the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement due to failure of Ukrainian Supreme Council (Rada) to pass promised required legislation. Yanukovych won the 2010 presidential election with strong support from voters in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and southern and eastern Ukraine. The Crimean autonomous government strongly supported Yanukovych and condemned the protests, saying they were "threatening political stability in the country". The Crimean autonomous parliament said that it supported the government's decision to suspend negotiations on the pending association agreement and urged Crimeans to "strengthen friendly ties with Russian regions".


On 4 February 2014, the Presidium of the Supreme Council considered holding a referendum on the peninsula's status, and asked the Russian government to guarantee the vote. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) responded by opening a criminal case to investigate the possible "subversion" of Ukraine's territorial integrity. On 20 February 2014, during a visit to Moscow, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Crimea Vladimir Konstantinov stated that the 1954 transfer of Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had been a mistake.


The February 2014 revolution that ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych sparked a political crisis in Crimea, which initially manifested as demonstrations against the new interim Ukrainian government, but rapidly escalated. In January 2014 the Sevastopol city council had already called for formation of "people's militia" units to "ensure firm defence" of the city from "extremism".


Crimean parliament members called for an extraordinary meeting on 21 February. In response to pro-Russian separatist sentiment, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that it would "use severe measures to prevent any action taken against diminishing the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine". The party with the largest number of seats in the Crimean parliament (80 of 100), the Party of Regions of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, did not discuss Crimean secession, and were supportive of an agreement between President Yanukovych and Euromaidan activists to end the unrest that was struck on the same day in Kyiv.


On 22–23 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin convened an all-night meeting with security services chiefs to discuss extrication of the deposed Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, and at the end of that meeting Putin had remarked that "we must start working on returning Crimea to Russia." On 23 February pro-Russian demonstrations were held in the Crimean city of Sevastopol.


On the same day, more troops in unmarked uniforms, assisted this time by what appeared to be local "Berkut" riot police (as well as Russian troops from the 31st Separate Airborne Assault Brigade dressed in Berkut uniforms), established security checkpoints on the Isthmus of Perekop and the Chonhar Peninsula, which separate Crimea from the Ukrainian mainland. Within hours, Ukraine had effectively been cut off from Crimea.


The Russian–Ukrainian Partition Treaty on the Status and Conditions of the Black Sea Fleet signed in 1997 and prolonged in 2010, determined the status of the military bases and vessels in Crimea prior to the crisis. Russia was allowed to maintain up to 25,000 troops, 24 artillery systems (with a calibre smaller than 100 mm), 132 armoured vehicles, and 22 military planes, on military base in Sevastopol and related infrastructure on the Crimean Peninsula. The Russian Black Sea fleet had basing rights in Crimea until 2042. Usage of navigation stations and troop movements were improperly covered by the treaty and were violated many times as well as related court decisions. February's troop movements were in "complete disregard" of the treaty.


Both Russia and Ukraine are signatories to the Charter of the United Nations. The ratification of said charter has several ramifications in terms of international law, particularly those that cover the subjects of declarations of independence, sovereignty, self-determination, acts of aggression, and humanitarian emergencies. Vladimir Putin said that Russian troops in the Crimean peninsula were aimed "to ensure proper conditions for the people of Crimea to be able to freely express their will", whilst Ukraine and other nations argue that such intervention is a violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.


Russia, United States, United Kingdom and Ukraine also signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, by which all these countries reaffirmed their obligation to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine (including Crimea) and to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.


According to the Constitution of Russia, the admission of new federal subjects is governed by federal constitutional law (art. 65.2). Such a law was adopted in 2001, and it postulates that admission of a foreign state or its part into Russia shall be based on a mutual accord between the Russian Federation and the relevant state and shall take place pursuant to an international treaty between the two countries; moreover, it must be initiated by the state in question, not by its subdivision or by Russia.


On 28 February 2014, Russian MP Sergey Mironov, along with other members of the Duma, introduced a bill to alter Russia's procedure for adding federal subjects. According to the bill, accession could be initiated by a subdivision of a country, provided that there is "absence of efficient sovereign state government in foreign state"; the request could be made either by subdivision bodies on their own or on the basis of a referendum held in the subdivision in accordance with corresponding national legislation.


On 11 March 2014, both the Supreme Council of Crimea and the Sevastopol City Council adopted a declaration of independence, which stated their intent to declare independence and request full accession to Russia should the pro-Russian option receive the most votes during the scheduled status referendum. The declaration directly referred to the Kosovo independence precedent, by which the Albanian-populated Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija declared independence from Russia's ally Serbia as the Republic of Kosovo in 2008—a unilateral action Russia staunchly opposed. Many analysts saw the Crimean declaration as an overt effort to pave the way for Crimea's annexation by Russia.


Crimean authorities' stated plans to declare independence from Ukraine made the Mironov bill unnecessary. On 20 March 2014, two days after the treaty of accession was signed, the bill was withdrawn by its initiators.


At its meeting on 21–22 March, the Venice Commission stated that the Mironov bill violated "in particular, the principles of territorial integrity, national sovereignty, non-intervention in the internal affairs of another state and pacta sunt servanda" and was therefore incompatible with international law.


On 27 February 2014, following the takeover of its building by Russian special forces, the Supreme Council of Crimea voted to hold a referendum on 25 May, with the initial question as to whether Crimea should upgrade its autonomy within Ukraine. The referendum date was later moved from 25 May to 30 March. A Ukrainian court declared the referendum to be illegal.


On 4 March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was not considering annexing Crimea. He said of the peninsula that "only citizens themselves, in conditions of free expression of will and their security can determine their future". Putin later acknowledged that he had ordered "work to bring Crimea back into Russia" as early as February. He also acknowledged that in early March there were "secret opinion polls" held in Crimea, which, according to him, reported overwhelming popular support for Crimea's incorporation into Russia.


On 6 March, the Supreme Council moved the referendum date to 16 March and changed its scope to ask a new question: whether Crimea should accede to Russia or restore the 1992 constitution within Ukraine, which the Ukrainian government had previously invalidated. This referendum, unlike one announced earlier, contained no option to maintain the "status quo" of governance under the 1998 constitution. Ukraine's erstwhile President, Oleksander Turchinov, stated that "The authorities in Crimea are totally illegitimate, both the parliament and the government. They are forced to work under the barrel of a gun and all their decisions are dictated by fear and are illegal."


On 14 March, the Crimean status referendum was deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, and a day later, the Verkhovna Rada formally dissolved the Crimean parliament.


The referendum was held despite the opposition from the Ukrainian government. Official results reported about 95.5% of participating voters in Crimea (turnout was 83%) were in favour of seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia. The results of referendum were questioned; another report by Evgeny Bobrov, a member of the Russian President's Human Rights Council, suggested the official results were inflated and only 15% to 30% of Crimeans eligible to vote actually voted for the Russian option.


The means by which the referendum was conducted were widely criticised by foreign governments and in the Ukrainian and international press, with reports that anyone holding a Russian passport regardless of residency in Crimea was allowed to vote. After the OSCE refused to send observers Russia invited a group of observers from various European far-right political parties aligned with Putin, who stated the referendum was conducted in a free and fair manner.


Putin officially recognised the Republic of Crimea 'as a sovereign and independent state' by decree and approved the admission of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol as separate federal subjects of Russia.


Accession treaty and finalization of the annexation.


The Treaty on Accession of the Republic of Crimea to Russia was signed between representatives of the Republic of Crimea (including Sevastopol, with which the rest of Crimea briefly unified) and the Russian Federation on 18 March 2014 to lay out terms for the immediate admission of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol as federal subjects of Russia and part of the Russian Federation. It was ratified by the Federal Assembly by 21 March.


During a controversial incident in Simferopol on 18 March, some Ukrainian sources said that armed gunmen that were reported to be Russian special forces allegedly stormed the base. This was contested by Russian authorities, who subsequently announced the arrest of an alleged Ukrainian sniper in connection with the killings, but later denied the arrest had occurred.


The two casualties had a joint funeral attended by both the Crimean and Ukrainian authorities, and both the Ukrainian soldier and Russian paramilitary "self-defence volunteer" were mourned together. As of March 2014 the incident was under investigation by both the Crimean authorities and the Ukrainian military.


In response to shooting, Ukraine's then acting defense minister Tenyukh authorised Ukrainian troops stationed in Crimea to use deadly force in life-threatening situations. This increased the risk of bloodshed during any takeover of Ukrainian military installations, yet the ensuing Russian operations to seize the remaining Ukrainian military bases and ships in Crimea did not bring new fatalities, although weapons were used and several people were injured. The Russian units involved in such operations were ordered to avoid usage of deadly force when possible. Morale among the Ukrainian troops, which for three weeks were blockaded inside their compounds without any assistance from the Ukrainian government, was very low, and the vast majority of them did not offer any real resistance.


On 19 March, President Putin submitted a treaty on Crimea's annexation by Russia and a constitutional amendment to set up two new federal subjects of the Russian Federation to the State Duma. The Russian Constitutional Court found that treaty is in compliance with the Constitution of Russia. The court sat in an emergency session following a formal request by President Vladimir Putin to assess the constitutionality of the treaty.


After the Russian Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of the treaty, the State Duma ratified it on 20 March. The Duma also approved the draft federal constitutional law admitting Crimea and Sevastopol and establishing them as federal subjects. A Just Russia's Ilya Ponomarev was the only State Duma member to vote against the measures. A day later, the treaty itself and the required amendment to article 65 of the Russian Constitution (which lists the federal subjects of Russia) were ratified by the Federation Council and almost immediately signed into law by Putin. Crimea's admission to the Russian Federation was considered retroactive to 18 March, when Putin and Crimean leaders signed the draft treaty.


On 24 March, the Ukrainian government ordered the full withdrawal of all of its armed forces from Crimea. In addition, the Ministry of Defense announced that approximately 50% of the Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea had defected to the Russian military. On 26 March the last Ukrainian military bases and Ukrainian Navy ships were captured by Russian troops.


On 27 March, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a non-binding resolution, which declared the Crimean referendum and subsequent status change invalid, by a vote of 100 to 11, with 58 abstentions and 24 absent.


Crimea and Sevastopol switched to Moscow Time at 10 p.m. on 29 March.


On 2 April, Russia formally denounced the 2010 Kharkiv Pact and Partition Treaty on the Status and Conditions of the Black Sea Fleet. Putin cited "the accession of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol into Russia" and resulting "practical end of renting relationships" as his reason for the denunciation. On the same day, he signed a decree formally rehabilitating the Crimean Tatars, who were ousted from their lands in 1944, and the Armenian, German, Greek, and Bulgarian minority communities in the region that Stalin also ordered removed in the 1940s.


On 11 April, the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea and City Charter of Sevastopol were adopted, in addition the new federal subjects were enumerated in a newly published revision of the Russian Constitution.


On 14 April, Vladimir Putin announced that he would open a ruble-only account with Bank Rossiya and would make it the primary bank in the newly annexed Crimea as well as giving the right to service payments on Russia's $36 billion wholesale electricity market – which gave the bank $112 million annually from commission charges alone.


In July 2015, Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, declared that Crimea had been fully integrated into Russia. Until 2016 these new subjects were grouped in the Crimean Federal District.


In 2017, a survey performed by the Centre for East European and International Studies showed that 85% of the non-Crimean Tatar respondents believed that if the referendum would be held again it would lead to the same or "only marginally different" results. Crimea was fully integrated into the Russian media sphere, and links with the rest of Ukraine were hardly existent.


On 26 November 2018, lawmakers in the Ukraine Parliament overwhelmingly backed the imposition of martial law along Ukraine's coastal regions and those bordering Russia in response to the firing upon and seizure of Ukrainian naval ships by Russia near the Crimean peninsula a day earlier. A total of 276 lawmakers in Kyiv backed the measure, which took effect on 28 November 2018 and was ended on 26 December.


On 28 December 2018, Russia completed a high-tech security fence marking the de facto border between Crimea and Ukraine.


While initially (right after the annexation), salaries rose, especially those of government workers, this was soon offset by the increase in prices caused by the depreciation of the ruble. Subsequently, after Russian authority became established, wages were cut back again by 30% to 70%. Tourism, previously Crimea's main industry, suffered in particular; it was down by 50% from 2014 in 2015. Crimean agricultural yields were also significantly impacted by the annexation. Ukraine cut off supplies of water through the North Crimean Canal, causing the 2014 rice crop to fail, and greatly damaging the maize and soybean crops. Additionally, research shows that the annexation had a negative influence of Russians working in Ukraine and Ukrainians working in Russia.


According to the German newspaper "Die Welt", the annexation of Crimea is economically disadvantageous for the Russian Federation. Russia will have to spend billions of euros a year to pay salaries and pensions. Moreover, Russia will have to undertake costly projects to connect Crimea to the Russian water supply and power system because Crimea has no land connection to Russia and at present (2014) gets water, gas and electricity from mainland Ukraine. This requires building a bridge and a pipeline across the Kerch Strait. Also, Novinite claims that a Ukrainian expert told "Die Welt" that Crimea "will not be able to attract tourists".


The first Deputy to Minister of Finance of Russian Federation Tatyana Nesterenko said in her interview to "Forbes Woman" that the decision to annex Crimea was made by Russian President Vladimir Putin exclusively, without consulting Russia's Finance Ministry.


The Russian business newspaper "Kommersant" expresses an opinion that Russia will not acquire anything economically from "accessing" Crimea, which is not very developed industrially, having just a few big factories, and whose yearly gross product is only $4 billion. The newspaper also says that everything from Russia will have to be delivered by sea, higher costs of transportation will result in higher prices for everything, and to avoid a decline in living standards Russia will have to subsidise Crimean people for a few months. In total, Kommersant estimates the costs of integrating Crimea into Russia in $30 billion over the next decade, i.e. $3 billion per year.


On the other hand, western oil experts estimate that Russia's seizing of Crimea, and the associated control of an area of Black Sea more than three times its land area gives it access to oil and gas reserves potentially worth trillions of dollars. It also deprives Ukraine of its chances of energy independence. Most immediately however, analysts said, Moscow's acquisition may alter the route along which the South Stream pipeline would be built, saving Russia money, time and engineering challenges. It would also allow Russia to avoid building in Turkish territorial waters, which was necessary in the original route to avoid Ukrainian territory. This pipeline was later canceled in favour of TurkStream, however.


Russian/Chechen businessman Ruslan Baisarov announced he is ready to invest 12 billion rubles into the construction of a modern sea resort in Crimea, which is expected to create about 1,300 jobs. Ramzan Kadyrov, the Head of Chechnya, said that other Chechen businessmen are planning to invest into Crimea as well.


In the year following the annexation, armed men seized various Crimean businesses, including banks, hotels, shipyards, farms, gas stations, a bakery, a dairy, and Yalta Film Studio. Russian media have noted this trend as "returning to the 90's", which is perceived as a period of anarchy and rule of gangs in Russia.


In 2015, the Investigative Committee of Russia announced a number of theft and corruption cases in infrastructure projects in Crimea, for example; spending that exceeded the actual accounted costs three times. A number of Russian officials were also arrested for corruption, including head of federal tax inspection.


(According to February 2016 official Ukrainian figures) after Russia's annexation 10% of Security Service of Ukraine personnel left Crimea; accompanied by 6,000 of the pre-annexation 20,300 people strong Ukrainian army.


As result of the Crimea unsettled status Russian mobile operators never expanded their operations on its territory and all mobile services are offered on the basis of "internal roaming", which caused significant controversy inside Russia. Telecoms however argued that expanding coverage to Crimea will put them at risk of Western sanctions and, as result, they will lose access to key equipment and software, none of which is produced locally.


In March 2014, Human Rights Watch reported that pro-Ukrainian activists and journalists had been attacked, abducted, and tortured by self-defense groups. Some Crimeans were simply "disappeared" with no explanation.


On 9 May 2014, the new "anti-extremist" amendment to the Criminal Code of Russia, passed in December 2013, came into force. Article 280.1 designated incitement of violation of territorial integrity of the Russian Federation (incl. calls for secession of Crimea from Russia) as a criminal offense in Russia, punishable by a fine of 300 thousand roubles or imprisonment up to 3 years. If such statements are made in public media or the internet, the punishment could be obligatory works up to 480 hours or imprisonment up to five years.


<section begin=HumanRights />Following the annexation of Crimea, according to report released on the Russian government run President of Russia's Council on Civil Society and Human Rights website, Tatars who were opposed to Russian rule have been persecuted, Russian law restricting freedom of speech has been imposed, and the new pro-Russian authorities "liquidated" the Kyiv Patriarchate Orthodox church on the peninsula. The Crimean Tatar television station was also shut down by the Russian authorities.


In February 2016 human rights defender Emir-Usein Kuku from Crimea was arrested and accused of belonging to the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir although he denies any involvement in this organization. Amnesty International has called for his immediate release.


In December 2016, the United Nations General Assembly voted on a resolution on human rights in occupied Crimea. It called on the Russian Federation "to take all measures necessary to bring an immediate end to all abuses against residents of Crimea, in particular reported discriminatory measures and practices, arbitrary detentions, torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, and to revoke all discriminatory legislation." It also urged Russia to "immediately release Ukrainian citizens who were unlawfully detained and judged without regard for elementary standards of justice."


According to the United Nations and multiple NGOs, the Russian Federation is responsible for multiple human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary detention, forced disappearances and instances of discrimination, including persecution of Crimean Tatars in Crimea since the illegal annexation. On 24 May 2014 Ervin Ibragimov, a former member of the Bakhchysarai Town Council and a member of the World Congress of Crimean Tatars went missing. CCTV footage from a camera at a nearby shop documents that Ibragimov had been stopped by a group of men and that he is briefly speaking to the men before being forced in their van. According to the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group Russian authorities refuse to investigate the disappearance of Ibragimov.


In May 2018 Server Mustafayev, the founder and coordinator of the human rights movement Crimean Solidarity was imprisoned by Russian authorities and charged with "membership of a terrorist organisation". Amnesty International and Front Line Defenders demand his immediate release.


On 12 June 2018, Ukraine lodged a memorandum weighing about 90 kg, consisting of 17,500 pages of text in 29 volumes to the UN's International Court of Justice about racial discrimination by Russian authorities in occupied Crimea and state financing of terrorism by Russian Federation in Donbass.


Between 2015 and 2019 over 134,000 people living in Crimea applied for and were issued Ukrainian passports.


A joint survey by American government agency Broadcasting Board of Governors and polling firm Gallup was taken during April 2014. It polled 500 residents of Crimea. The survey found that 82.8% of those polled believed that the results of the Crimean status referendum reflected the views of most residents of Crimea, whereas 6.7% said that it did not. 73.9% of those polled said that they thought that the annexation would have a positive impact on their lives, whereas 5.5% said that it would not. 13.6% said that they did not know.


A comprehensive poll released on 8 May 2014 by the Pew Research Centre surveyed local opinions on the annexation. Despite international criticism of 16 March referendum on Crimean status, 91% of those Crimeans polled thought that the vote was free and fair, and 88% said that the Ukrainian government should recognise the results.


In a survey completed in 2019 by a Russian company FOM 72% of surveyed Crimean residents said their lives have improved since annexation. At the same time only 39% Russians living in the mainland said the annexation was beneficial for the country as a whole which marks a significant drop from 67% in 2015.


Immediately after the treaty of accession was signed in March, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Provisional Principal of Russia in Ukraine to present "note verbale" of protest against Russia's recognition of the Republic of Crimea and its subsequent annexation. Two days later, the Verkhovna Rada condemned the treaty and called Russia's actions "a gross violation of international law". The Rada called on the international community to avoid recognition of the "so-called Republic of Crimea" or the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol by Russia as new federal subjects.


On 15 April 2014, the Verkhovna Rada declared the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol to be under "provisional occupation" by the Russian military and imposed travel restrictions on Ukrainians visiting Crimea. The territories were also deemed "inalienable parts of Ukraine" subject to Ukrainian law. Among other things, the special law approved by the Rada restricted foreign citizens' movements to and from the Crimean Peninsula and forbade certain types of entrepreneurship. The law also forbade activity of government bodies formed in violation of Ukrainian law and designated their acts as null and void.


Ukrainian authorities greatly reduced the volume of water flowing into Crimea via the North Crimean Canal due to huge debt for water supplied in previous year, threatening the viability of the peninsula's agricultural crops, which are heavily dependent on irrigation.


The Ukrainian National Council for TV and Radio Broadcasting has instructed all cable operators on 11 March to stop transmitting a number of Russian channels, including the international versions of the main state-controlled stations, Rossiya-1, Channel One and NTV, as well as news channel Rossiya-cable operators on.


In March 2014, activists began organising flash mobs in supermarkets to urge customers not to buy Russian goods and to boycott Russian gas stations, banks, and concerts. In April 2014, some cinemas in Kyiv, Lviv, and Odessa began shunning Russian films.


On 2 December 2014, the Ministry of Information Policy was created with one of its goals being, according to first Minister of Information, Yuriy Stets, to counteract "Russian information aggression".


In December 2014, Ukraine halted all train and bus services to Crimea.


On 16 September 2015 the Ukrainian parliament voted for the law that sets 20 February 2014 as the official date of the Russian temporary occupation of Crimean peninsula. On 7 October 2015 the President of Ukraine signed the law into force.


The Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and IDPs was established by Ukrainian government on 20 April 2016 to manage occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea regions affected by Russian military intervention of 2014.


In a poll published on 24 February 2014 by the state-owned Russian Public Opinion Research Center, only 15% of those Russians polled said 'yes' to the question: "Should Russia react to the overthrow of the legally elected authorities in Ukraine?"


On 26 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian Armed Forces to be "put on alert in the Western Military District as well as units stationed with the 2nd Army Central Military District Command involved in aerospace defence, airborne troops and long-range military transport." Despite media speculation that this was in reaction to the events in Ukraine, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said it was for reasons separate from the unrest in Ukraine. On 27 February 2014, the Russian government dismissed accusations that it was in violation of the basic agreements regarding the Black Sea Fleet: "All movements of armored vehicles are undertaken in full compliance with the basic agreements and did not require any approvals".


On 27 February, the Russian governing agencies presented the new law project on granting citizenship.


The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the West and particularly NATO to "abandon the provocative statements and respect the neutral status of Ukraine". In its statement, the ministry claims that the agreement on settlement of the crisis, which was signed on 21 February and was witnessed by foreign ministries from Germany, Poland and France had to this date, not been implemented (Vladimir Lukin from Russia had not signed it).


On 28 February, according to ITAR-TASS, the Russian Ministry of Transport discontinued further talks with Ukraine in regards to the Kerch Strait Bridge project. However, on 3 March Dmitry Medvedev, then Prime Minister of Russia, signed a decree creating a subsidiary of Russian Highways (Avtodor) to build a bridge at an unspecified location along the Kerch strait.


On Russian social networks, there was a movement to gather volunteers who served in the Russian army to go to Ukraine.


On 28 February, President Putin stated in telephone calls with key EU leaders that it was of "extreme importance of not allowing a further escalation of violence and the necessity of a rapid normalisation of the situation in Ukraine". Already on 19 February the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had referred to the Euromaidan revolution as the "Brown revolution".


The Federation Council approved that Russia may introduce a limited contingent of Russian troops in Crimea for the security of the Black Sea Fleet and the Russians.


In Moscow, on 2 March, an estimated 27,000 rallied in support of the Russian government's decision to intervene in Ukraine. The rallies received considerable attention on Russian state TV and were officially approved by the government.


On 2 March, one Moscow resident protested against Russian intervention by holding a "Stop the war" banner, but he was immediately harassed by passers-by, and when the police were arresting him, a woman offered them a serious, fabricated charge against him, of beating up a child; however, her charge was rejected by the police. Andrei Zubov, a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, who compared Russian actions in Crimea to the Anschluss of Austria, was threatened. Akexander Chuyev, the leader of the pro-Kremlin Spravedlivaya Rossiya party, also objected to Russian intervention in Ukraine. Boris Akunin, popular Russian writer, predicted that Russia's moves would lead to political and economic isolation.


President Putin's approval rating among the Russian public increased by nearly 10% since the crisis began, up to 71.6%, the highest in three years, according to a poll conducted by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, released on 19 March. Additionally, the same poll showed that more than 90% of Russians supported unification with the Crimean Republic.


On 4 March, at a press conference in Novo-Ogaryovo, President Putin expressed his view on the situation that if a revolution took place in Ukraine, it would be a new country with which Russia had not concluded any treaties. He offered an analogy with the events of 1917 in Russia, when as a result of the revolution the Russian Empire fell apart and a new state was created. However, he stated Ukraine would still have to honour its debts.


Russian politicians speculated that there were already 143,000 Ukrainian refugees in Russia. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs refuted those claims of refugee increases in Russia. At a briefing on 4 March 2014, the director of the department of information policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Yevhen Perebiynis said that Russia was misinforming its own citizens as well as the entire international community to justify its own actions in the Crimea.


On 5 March, an anchor of the Russian-owned international news channel RT America, Abby Martin, in an interview with Piers Morgan, said she "did not agree" with how her employer RT was covering the Ukrainian crisis, but claimed RT still supported her despite her differences of opinion. Also on 5 March 2014, another RT America anchor, Liz Wahl, of the network's Washington, DC bureau, resigned on air, explaining that she could not be "part of a network that whitewashes the actions of Putin" and citing her Hungarian ancestry and the memory of the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Uprising as a factor in her decision.


In early March, Igor Andreyev, a 75-year-old survivor of the Siege of Leningrad, attended an anti-war rally against the Russian intervention in Crimea and was holding a sign that read "Peace to the World". The riot police arrested him, and a local pro-government lawyer then accused him of being a supporter of "fascism". The retiree, who lived on a 6,500-ruble monthly pension, was fined 10,000 rubles.


Prominent dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky said that Crimea should stay within Ukraine with broader autonomy.


On 13 March, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a comparison between Crimea and Kosovo in a phone call with US President Barack Obama.


On 15 March, thousands of protesters (estimates varying from 3,000 by official sources up to 50,000 claimed by opposition) in Moscow marched against Russian involvement in Ukraine, many waving Ukrainian flags. At the same time, a pro-government (and pro-referendum) rally occurred across the street, counting in the thousands as well (officials claiming 27,000 with opposition claiming about 10,000).


In February 2015, the leading independent Russian newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" reported that it obtained documents, allegedly written by oligarch Konstantin Malofayev and others, which provided the Russian government with a strategy in the event of Viktor Yanukovych's removal from power and the break-up of Ukraine, which were considered likely. The documents outline plans for annexation of Crimea and the eastern portions of the country, closely describing the events that actually followed after Yanukovych's fall. The documents also describe plans for a public relations campaign which would seek to justify Russian actions.


In June 2015 Mikhail Kasyanov stated that all Russian Duma decisions on Crimea annexation were illegal from the international point of view and the annexation was provoked by false accusations of discrimination of Russian nationals in Ukraine.


As of January 2019, Arkady Rotenberg through his Stroygazmontazh LLC and his companies building the Crimean Bridge along with Nikolai Shamalov and Yuri Kovalchuk through their Rossiya Bank have become the most important investors in Russia's development of the annexed Crimea.


Though the 2014 annexation of Crimea is condemned by most governments as indicated in a UN General Assembly vote, the Russian government argued that the transfer was justified as supported by most of local population, which is apparently confirmed by local opinion polls, consistently displaying local support for the annexation. However, several authors have cautioned against using surveys concerning identities and support for the annexation conducted in "oppressive political environment" of Russian-held Crimea.


There have been a range of international reactions to the annexation. The UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution 100 in favour, 11 against and 58 abstentions in the 193-nation assembly that declared invalid Crimea's Moscow-backed referendum. In a move supported by the Lithuanian President, the United States government imposed sanctions against persons they deem to have violated or assisted in the violation of Ukraine's sovereignty. The European Union suspended talks with Russia on economic and visa-related matters, and is considering more stringent sanctions against Russia in the near future, including asset freezes. while Japan announced sanctions which include suspension of talks relating to military, space, investment, and visa requirements. The United Kingdom qualified the referendum vote in Crimea of being "farcical", "illegal" and "illegitimate".


China said "We respect the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine". A spokesman restated China's belief of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations and urged dialogue.


Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called for change in EU energy policy as Germany's dependence on Russian gas poses risks for Europe.


On 13 March, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned the Russian government it risks massive damage to Russia, economically and politically, if it refuses to change course on Ukraine, though close economic links between Germany and Russia significantly reduce the scope for any sanctions.


After Russia moved to formally incorporate Crimea, some worried whether it may do the same in other regions. US deputy national security advisor Tony Blinken said that the Russian troops massed on the eastern Ukrainian border may be preparing to enter the country's eastern regions. Russian officials stated that Russian troops would not enter other areas. US Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, warned that the same troops were in a position to take over the separatist Russian-speaking Moldovan province of Transnistria.


On 9 April, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe deprived Russia of voting rights.


On 14 August, while visiting Crimea, Vladimir Putin ruled out pushing beyond Crimea. He undertook to do everything he could to end the conflict in Ukraine, saying Russia needed to build calmly and with dignity, not by confrontation and war which isolated it from the rest of the world.


On 15 March 2014, a US-sponsored resolution that went to a vote in the UN Security Council to reaffirm that council's commitment to Ukraine's "sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity" was not approved. Though a total of 13 council members voted in favour of the resolution and China abstained, Russia vetoed the resolution.


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The Crimean campaigns of 1687 and 1689 (, ) were two military campaigns of the Tsardom of Russia against the Crimean Khanate. They were a part of the Russo-Turkish War (1686–1700) and Russo-Crimean Wars. These were the first Russian forces to come close to Crimea since 1569. They failed due to poor planning and the practical problem of moving such a large force across the steppe but nonetheless played a key role in halting the Ottoman expansion in Europe. The campaigns came as a surprise for the Ottoman leadership, spoiled its plans to invade Poland and Hungary and forced it to move significant forces from Europe to the east, which greatly helped the League in its struggle against the Ottomans.


Having signed the Eternal Peace Treaty with Poland in 1686, Russia became a member of the anti-Turkish coalition ("Holy League" — Austria, the Republic of Venice and Poland), which was pushing the Turks south after their failure at Vienna in 1683 (the major result of this war was the conquest by Austria of most of Hungary from Turkish rule). Russia's role in 1687 was to send a force south to Perekop to bottle up the Crimeans inside their peninsula.


The Crimean campaigns of 1687 and 1689 diverted some of the Ottoman and Crimean forces in favour of Russia's allies. They also led to the end of the alliance between the Crimean Khanate, France and Imre Thököly signed in 1683. However, the Russian army didn't reach the goal of stabilizing Russia's southern borders. The unsuccessful outcome of these campaigns was one of the reasons the government of Sophia Alekseyevna collapsed.


Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski (, , ; ; ) was a Russian military leader, statesman, nobleman and favourite of Catherine the Great. He died during negotiations over the Treaty of Jassy, which ended a war with the Ottoman Empire that he had overseen.


Potemkin was born into a family of middle-income noble landowners. He first attracted Catherine's favor for helping in her 1762 coup, then distinguished himself as a military commander in the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). He became Catherine's lover, favorite and possibly her consort. After their passion cooled, he remained her lifelong friend and favored statesman. Catherine obtained for him the title of "Prince of the Holy Roman Empire" and gave him the title of "Prince of the Russian Empire" among many others: he was both a Grand Admiral and the head of all of Russia's land and irregular forces. Potemkin's achievements include the peaceful annexation of the Crimea (1783) and the successful second Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792).


In 1775, Potemkin became the governor-general of Russia's new southern provinces. An absolute ruler, he worked to colonize the wild steppes, controversially dealing firmly with the Cossacks who lived there. He founded the towns of Kherson, Nikolayev, Sevastopol, and Ekaterinoslav. Ports in the region became bases for his new Black Sea Fleet.


His rule in the south is associated with the "Potemkin village", a ruse involving the construction of painted façades to mimic real villages, full of happy, well-fed people, for visiting officials to see. Potemkin was known for his love of women, gambling and material wealth. He oversaw the construction of many historically significant buildings, including the Tauride Palace in St. Petersburg.


A distant relative of the Moscovite diplomat Pyotr Potemkin (1617–1700), Grigory was born in the village of Chizhovo near Smolensk into a family of middle-income noble landowners.


His father, Alexander Potemkin, was a decorated war veteran; his mother Daria was "good-looking, capable and intelligent", though their marriage proved ultimately unhappy. Potemkin received his first name in honour of his father's cousin Grigory Matveevich Kizlovsky, a civil servant who became his godfather. It has been suggested that Kizlovsky fathered Potemkin, who became the centre of attention, heir to the village and the only son among six children. As the son of an (albeit petty) noble family, he grew up with the expectation that he would serve the Russian Empire.


Back at the front, Potemkin won more military acclaim, but then fell ill; rejecting medicine, he recovered only slowly. After a lull in hostilities in 1772 his movements are unclear, but it seems that he returned to St. Petersburg where he is recorded, perhaps apocryphally, to have been one of Catherine's closest advisers. Though Orlov was replaced as her favourite, it was not Potemkin who benefited. Alexander Vasilchikov, another Horse-Guardsman, replaced Orlov as the queen's lover. Potemkin returned to war in 1773 as Lieutenant-General to fight in Silistria. It appears that Catherine missed him, and that Potemkin took a December letter from her as a summons. In any case Potemkin returned to St. Petersburg as a war hero.


Potemkin returned to St. Petersburg in November 1783 and was promoted to Field Marshal when the Crimea was formally annexed the following February. He also became President of the College of War. The province of Taurida (the Crimea) was added to the state of Novorossiya (lit. "New Russia"). Potemkin moved south in mid-March, as the "Prince of Taurida". He had been the "namestnik" of Russia's southern provinces (including Novorossiya, Azov, Saratov, Astrakhan and the Caucasus) since 1774, repeatedly expanding the domain via military action. He kept his own court, which rivalled Catherine's: by the 1780s he operated a chancellery with fifty or more clerks and had his own minister, Vasili Popov, to oversee day-to-day affairs. Another favored associate was Mikhail Faleev.


The "criminal" breaking of the Cossack hosts, particularly the Zaporozhian Cossacks in 1775, helped define his rule. However, Montefiore argues that given their location, and in the wake of the Pugachev rebellion, the Cossacks were likely doomed in any case. By the time of Potemkin's death, the Cossacks and their threat of anarchic revolt were well controlled. Among the Zaporizhian Cossacks he was known as "Hrytsko Nechesa".


The notion of the Potemkin village (coined in German by critical biographer Georg von Helbig as "") arose from Catherine's visit to the south. Critics accused Potemkin of using painted façades to fool Catherine into thinking that the area was far richer than it was. Thousands of peasants were alleged to have been stage-managed for this purpose. Certainly, Potemkin had arranged for Catherine to see the best he had to offer (organising numerous exotic excursions) and at least two cities' officials did conceal poverty by building false houses. It seems unlikely that the fraud approached the scale alleged. The Prince of Ligne, a member of the Austrian delegation, who had explored on his own during the trip, later proclaimed the allegations to be false.


Success on the Turkish front continued, mostly attributable to Potemkin. He now had the opportunity to confront the Turks and dictate a peace, but that would mean leaving Catherine. His procrastination soured Catherine's attitude towards him, a situation compounded by Potemkin's choice of the married Princess Paskovia Adreevna Golitsyna (née Shuvalova) as his latest mistress. In the end, Potemkin was given the requisite authority to negotiate with the Turks (and, afterwards, to pursue his Polish ambitions), and dispatched by Catherine back to the south. She sent a note after him, reading "Goodbye my friend, I kiss you".


Potemkin was embalmed, and a funeral was held for him in Jassy. Eight days after his death, he was buried. Catherine was distraught and ordered social life in St. Petersburg be put on hold. Derzhavin's ode "Waterfall" lamented Potemkin's death; likewise many in the military establishment had looked upon Potemkin as a father figure and were especially saddened by his demise. Polish contemporary Stanisław Małachowski claimed that Aleksandra von Engelhardt, a niece of Potemkin's and the wife of Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, a magnate and prominent leader of the Targowica Confederation, also worried for the fate of Poland after the death of the man who had planned to revitalise the Polish state with him as its new head.


Potemkin had used the state treasury as a personal bank, preventing the resolution of his financial affairs to this day. Catherine purchased the Tauride Palace and his art collection from his estate, and paid off his debts. Consequently, he left a relative fortune.


Catherine's son Paul, who succeeded to the throne in 1796, attempted to undo as many of Potemkin's reforms as possible. The Tauride Palace was turned into a barracks, and the city of Gregoripol, which had been named in Potemkin's honor, was renamed.


Potemkin's grave survived a destruction order issued by Paul and was eventually displayed by the Bolsheviks. His remains now appear to lie in his tomb at St. Catherine's Cathedral in Kherson. The exact whereabouts of some of his internal organs, including his heart and brain first kept at Golia Monastery in Jassy, remain unknown.


Potemkin "exuded both menace and welcome"; he was arrogant, demanding of his courtiers, and very changeable in his moods, but also fascinating, warm, and kind. It was generally agreed among his female companions that he was "amply endowed with 'sex appeal'".


Potemkin was most likely was affected by bipolar disorder. His highs and lows, his material and sexual excesses, his impulsive whims, his energy and lethargy, and his depressive spells speak to some kind of bipolar disorder. In a time that was not aware of mental illness, Potemkin (and, it must be said, the people in his life such as Catherine) suffered from this lack of understanding.


Potemkin was also an intellectual. The Prince of Ligne noted that Potemkin had "natural abilities [and] an excellent memory". He was interested in history, generally knowledgeable, and loved the classical music of the period, as well as opera. He liked all food, both peasant and fine (particular favorites included roast beef and potatoes), and his anglophilia meant that English gardens were prepared wherever he went. A practical politician, his political ideas were "quintessentially Russian", and he believed in the superiority of the Tsarist autocracy (he once described the French revolutionaries as "a pack of madmen").


One evening, at the height of his power, Potemkin declared to his dinner guests:


Potemkin had no legitimate descendants, though it is probable he had illegitimate issue. Four of his five sisters lived long enough to bear children, but only the daughters of his sister Marfa Elena (sometimes rendered as 'Helen') received Potemkin's special attention. The five unmarried Engelhardt sisters arrived in court in 1775 on the direction of their recently widowed father Vassily. Legend suggests Potemkin soon seduced many of the girls, one of whom was twelve or thirteen at the time. An affair with the third eldest, Varvara, can be verified; after that had subsided, Potemkin formed close—and probably amorous—relationships successively with Alexandra, the second eldest, and Ekaterina, the fifth.


Potemkin also had influential relatives. Potemkin's sister Maria, for example, married Russian senator Nikolay Samoylov: their son Alexander was decorated for his service under Potemkin in the army; their daughter Ekaterina married first into the Raevsky family, and then the wealthy landowner Lev Davydov. She had children with both husbands, including highly decorated General Nikolay Raevsky, Potemkin's great-nephew. His wider family included several distant cousins, among them Count Pavel Potemkin, another decorated military figure, whose brother Mikhail married Potemkin's niece Tatiana Engelhardt. A distant nephew, Felix Yusupov, helped murder Rasputin in 1916.


Despite attempts by Paul I to play down Potemkin's role in Russian history, his name found its way into numerous items of common parlance:


The Crimean Khanate ( or ), own name — Great Horde and Desht-i Kipchak (), in old European historiography and geography — Little Tartary () was a Crimean Tatar state existing from 1441 to 1783, the longest-lived of the Turkic khanates that succeeded the empire of the Golden Horde. Established by Hacı I Giray in 1441, it was regarded as the direct heir to the Golden Horde and to Desht-i-Kipchak.


In 1783, violating the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (which had guaranteed non-interference of both Russia and the Ottoman Empire in the affairs of the Crimean Khanate), the Russian Empire annexed the khanate. Among the European powers, only France came out with an open protest against this act, due to the longstanding Franco-Ottoman alliance.


Crimean khans, considering their state as the heir and legal successor of the Golden Horde and Desht-i Kipchak, called themselves khans of "the Great Horde, the Great State and the Throne of the Crimea". The full title of the Crimean khans, used in official documents and correspondence with foreign rulers, varying slightly from document to document during the three centuries of the khanate's existence, was as follows: "By the Grace and help of the blessed and highest Lord, the great padishah of the Great Horde, and the Great State, and the Throne of the Crimea, and all the Nogai, and the mountain Circassians, and the tats and tavgachs, and The Kipchak steppe and all the Tatars" ().


According to Oleksa Hayvoronsky, the inhabitants of the Crimean Khanate in Crimean Tatar usually referred to their state as "Qırım yurtu, Crimean Yurt", which can be translated into English as "the country of Crimea" or "Crimean country".


English-speaking writers during the 18th and early 19th centuries often called the territory of the Crimean Khanate and of the Lesser Nogai Horde "Little Tartary" (or subdivided it as "Crim Tartary" (also "Krim Tartary") and "Kuban Tartary"). The name "Little Tartary" distinguished the area from (Great) Tartary – those areas of central and northern Asia inhabited by Turkic peoples or Tatars.


The London-based cartographer Herman Moll in a map of c. 1729 shows "Little Tartary" as including the Crimean peninsula and the steppe between Dnieper and Mius River as far north as the Dnieper bend and the upper Tor River (a tributary of the Donets).


The Khanate included the Crimean peninsula and the adjacent steppes, mostly corresponding to the parts of South Ukraine between the Dnieper and the Donets rivers (i.e. including most of present-day Zaporizhzhia Oblast, left-Dnepr parts of Kherson Oblast, besides minor parts of southeastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and western Donetsk Oblast). The territory controlled by the Crimean Khanate shifted throughout its existence due to the constant incursions by the Cossacks, who had lived along the Don since the disintegration of the Golden Horde in the 15th century.


The first known Turkic peoples appeared in Crimea in the 6th century, during the conquest of the Crimea by The Turkic Kaganate. In the 11th century, Cumans (Kipchaks) appeared in Crimea, who later became the ruling and state-forming people of the Golden Horde and the Crimean Khanate. In the middle of the 13th century, the northern steppe lands of the Crimea, inhabited mainly by Turkic peoples — Cumans, became the possession of Ulus Juchi, known as the Golden Horde or Ulu Ulus. In this era, the role of Turkic peoples increased. Since this time, the local Kipchaks took the name of Tatars ("tatarlar").


In the Horde period, the khans of the Golden Horde were the Supreme rulers of the Crimea, but their governors — Emirs — exercised direct control. The first formally recognized ruler in the Crimea is considered Aran-Timur, the nephew of Batu Khan of the Golden Horde, who received this area from Mengu-Timur, and the first center of the Crimea was the ancient city Qırım (Solhat). This name then gradually spread to the entire Peninsula. The second center of Crimea was the valley adjacent to Qırq Yer and Bağçasaray.


The multi-ethnic population of Crimea then consisted mainly of those who lived in the steppe and foothills of the Peninsula Kipchaks (Cumans), Crimean Greeks, Crimean Goths, Alans, and Armenians, who lived mainly in cities and mountain villages. The Crimean nobility was mostly of both Kipchak and Horden origin.


Horde rule for the peoples who inhabited the Crimean Peninsula was, in general, painful. The rulers of the Golden Horde repeatedly organized punitive campaigns in the Crimea, when the local population refused to pay tribute. A well-known campaign of the Nogai Khan in 1299, as a result of which a number of Crimean cities suffered. As in other regions of the Horde, separatist tendencies soon began to manifest themselves in Crimea.


In 1303, in Crimea, the most famous written monument of the Kypchak or Cuman language was created (named in Kypchak "tatar tili") — "Codex Cumanicus", which is the oldest memorial of the Crimean Tatar language and of great importance for the history of Kypchak and Oghuz dialects — as directly related to the Kipchaks of the Black Sea steppes and Crimea.


During the reign of Canike Hanım, Tokhtamysh's daughter, in Qırq-Or, she supported Hacı I Giray in the struggle against the descendants of Tokhtamysh, Kichi-Muhammada and Sayid Ahmad, who as well as Hacı Giray claimed full power in the Crimea and probably saw him as her heir to the Crimean throne. In the sources of the 16th—18th centuries, the opinion according to which the separation of the Crimean Tatar state was raised to Tokhtamysh, and Canike was the most important figure in this process, completely prevailed.


The sons of Hacı I Giray contended against each other to succeed him. The Ottomans intervened and installed one of the sons, Meñli I Giray, on the throne. Menli I Giray, took the imperial title "Sovereign of Two Continents and Khan of Khans of Two Seas."


In 1475 the Ottoman forces, under the command of Gedik Ahmet Pasha, conquered the Greek Principality of Theodoro and the Genoese colonies at Cembalo, Soldaia, and Caffa (modern Feodosiya). Thenceforth the khanate was a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman sultan enjoyed veto power over the selection of new Crimean khans. The Empire annexed the Crimean coast but recognized the legitimacy of the khanate rule of the steppes, as the khans were descendants of Genghis Khan.


The alliance of the Crimean Tatars and the Ottomans was comparable to the Polish–Lithuanian union in its importance and durability. The Crimean cavalry became indispensable for the Ottomans' campaigns against Poland, Hungary, and Persia.


In 1502, Meñli I Giray defeated the last khan of the Great Horde, which put an end to the Horde's claims on Crimea. The Khanate initially chose as its capital Salaçıq near the Qırq Yer fortress. Later, the capital was moved a short distance to Bahçeseray, founded in 1532 by Sahib I Giray. Both Salaçıq and the Qırq Yer fortress today are part of the expanded city of Bahçeseray.


The slave trade was the backbone of the economy of the Crimean Khanate. However, some historians are of the opinion that the role of the slave trade in the economy of the Crimean Khanate is greatly exaggerated by modern historians, and the raiding economy is nothing but a historical myth.


The Crimeans frequently mounted raids into the Danubian principalities, Poland–Lithuania, and Muscovy to enslave people whom they could capture; for each captive, the khan received a fixed share (savğa) of 10% or 20%. These campaigns by Crimean forces were either ("sojourns"), officially declared military operations led by the khans themselves, or "çapuls" ("despoiling"), raids undertaken by groups of noblemen, sometimes illegally because they contravened treaties concluded by the khans with neighbouring rulers.


For a long time, until the early 18th century, the khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, exporting about 2 million slaves from Russia and Poland–Lithuania over the period 1500–1700. Caffa, an Ottoman city on Crimean peninsula (and thus not part of the Khanate), was one of the best known and significant trading ports and slave markets. In 1769, a last major Tatar raid resulted in the capture of 20,000 Russian and Ruthenian slaves.


Author and historian Brian Glyn Williams writes:


Early modern sources are full of descriptions of sufferings of Christian slaves captured by the Crimean Tatars in the course of their raids:


Alliances and conflicts with Poland and Zaporozhian Cossacks.


The Crimeans had a complex relationship with Zaporozhian Cossacks who lived to the north of the khanate in the modern Ukraine. The Cossacks provided a measure of protection against Tatar raids for Poland–Lithuania and received subsidies for their service. They also raided Crimean and Ottoman possessions in the region. At times Crimean Khanate made alliances with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Zaporizhian Sich. The assistance of İslâm III Giray during the Khmelnytsky Uprising in 1648 contributed greatly to the initial momentum of military successes for the Cossacks. The relationship with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was also exclusive, as it was the home dynasty of the Girays, who sought sanctuary in Lithuania in the 15th century before establishing themselves on the Crimean peninsula.


In the middle of the 16th century, the Crimean Khanate asserted a claim to be the successor to the Golden Horde, which entailed asserting the right of rule over the Tatar khanates of the Caspian-Volga region, particularly the Kazan Khanate and Astrakhan Khanate. This claim pitted it against Muscovy for dominance in the region. A successful campaign by Devlet I Giray upon the Russian capital in 1571 culminated in the burning of Moscow, and he thereby gained the sobriquet, That Alğan (seizer of the throne). The following year, however, the Crimean Khanate lost access to the Volga once and for all due to its catastrophic defeat in the Battle at Molodi.


Don Cossacks reached lower Don, Donets and Azov by the 1580s and thus became the north-eastern neighbours of the khanate. They attracted peasants, serfs and gentry fleeing internal conflicts, over-population and intensifying exploitation. Just as Zaporozhians protected the southern borders of the Commonwealth, Don Cossacks protected Muscovy and themselves attacked the khanate and Ottoman fortresses.


Under the influence of the Crimean Tatars and of the Ottoman Empire, large numbers of Circassians converted to Islam from Christianity. Circassian mercenaries and recruits played an important role in the khan's armies, khans often married Circassian women and it was a custom for young Crimean princes to spend time in Circassia training in the art of warfare. Several conflicts occurred between Circassians and Crimean Tatars in the 18th century, with the former defeating an army of khan Kaplan Giray and Ottoman auxiliaries in the battle of Kanzhal.


The Turkish traveler writer Evliya Çelebi mentions the impact of Cossack raids from Azak upon the territories of the Crimean Khanate. These raids ruined trade routes and severely depopulated many important regions. By the time Evliya Çelebi had arrived almost all the towns he visited were affected by the Cossack raids. In fact, the only place Evliya Çelebi considered safe from the Cossacks was the Ottoman fortress at Arabat.


In the first half of the 17th century, Kalmyks formed the Kalmyk Khanate in the Lower Volga and under Ayuka Khan conducted many military expeditions against the Crimean Khanate and Nogays. By becoming an important ally and later part of the Russian Empire and taking an oath to protect its southeastern borders, the Kalmyk Khanate took an active part in all Russian war campaigns in the 17th and 18th centuries, providing up to 40,000 fully equipped horsemen.


The united Russian and Ukrainian forces attacked the Khanate during the Chigirin Campaigns and the Crimean Campaigns. It was during the Russo-Turkish War, 1735-1739 that the Russians, under the command of Field-Marshal Münnich, finally managed to penetrate the Crimean Peninsula itself, burning and destroying everything on their way.


More warfare ensued during the reign of Catherine II. The Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774 resulted in the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, which made the Crimean Khanate independent from the Ottoman Empire and aligned it with the Russian Empire.


The rule of the last Crimean khan Şahin Giray was marked with increasing Russian influence and outbursts of violence from the khan administration towards internal opposition. On 8 April 1783, in violation of the treaty (some parts of which had been already violated by Crimeans and Ottomans), Catherine II intervened in the civil war, de facto annexing the whole peninsula as the Taurida Governorate. In 1787, Şahin Giray took refuge in the Ottoman Empire and was eventually executed, on Rhodes, by the Ottoman authorities for betrayal. The royal Giray family survives to this day.


Through the 1792 Treaty of Jassy (Iaşi), the Russian frontier was extended to the Dniester River and the takeover of Yedisan was complete. The 1812 Treaty of Bucharest transferred Bessarabia to Russian control.