Crimea

• 1. Introduction

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  Crimea is a peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost completely ringed by water. The smaller Sea of Azov laps its northeastern edge. Only a thin strip of land, the Isthmus of Perekop, between about 5 and 7 km wide, keeps it attached to the Ukrainian mainland. Almost an island, then, but never quite one. That geography has made Crimea a hinge between worlds for thousands of years. Greeks built colonies on its southern fringe around the 5th century BCE. Steppe nomads roamed the interior. Empires layered themselves one atop the next. How does a single peninsula end up with most of its towns carrying several names? Why was a place this small fought over by Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, the British, the French, Nazi Germany, and the Soviets in turn? And why, today, is land internationally recognised as part of Ukraine living under Russian occupation that began in 2014? The population is 2.4 million, and the largest city is Sevastopol.

• 2. Layers Of Conquest

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  Chersonesos, a Greek colony near modern-day Sevastopol, anchors the recorded history of Crimea from around the 5th century BCE. Scythians and Tauri held the hinterland to the north, and it was the Tauri who lent the peninsula its older name, the Tauric Peninsula. The southern coast eventually gathered into the Bosporan Kingdom, which became a client kingdom of Rome from 63 BCE to 341 CE.

  Greek culture clung to the south coast for nearly two thousand years. It survived under the Byzantine Empire from 341 to 1204 CE, then the Empire of Trebizond, then the independent Principality of Theodoro, which ended in 1475 CE. A prince of Kievan Rus' was baptised at Sevastopol, beginning the Christianisation of Kievan Rus'.

  The Mongol Golden Horde took the north and centre in the 13th century, while the Christian Principality of Theodoro and Genoese colonies held the south. The Genoese-Mongol Wars were fought for control of southern Crimea between the 13th and 15th centuries. Out of the Horde's collapse, the Crimean Khanate formed in the 1440s, and it soon became subject to the Ottoman Empire. A major source of prosperity in those years was frequent raiding into Eastern Europe for slaves, with lands held by Russia and Poland-Lithuania often targeted.

• 3. The Russian Turn

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  Catherine the Great defeated the Ottoman Empire and, by the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774, made the Tatars of Crimea politically independent. In 1783, after the Russo-Turkish War of 1768 to 1774, the Russian Empire annexed the peninsula, increasing Russia's power in the Black Sea region.

  From 1853 to 1856 the peninsula's grip on the Black Sea made it the stage for the principal engagements of the Crimean War, where Russia lost to a French-led alliance. During the Russian Civil War, between 1917 and 1921, Crimea changed hands many times. Wrangel's anti-Bolshevik White Army made its last stand here. Many anti-Communist fighters and civilians escaped to Istanbul, but up to 150,000 were killed in Crimea.

  In 1921 the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Germany occupied it from 1942 to 1944 during the Second World War. When the Soviets retook Crimea in 1944, they deported the Crimean Tatars and several other nationalities elsewhere in the USSR, an act described as a cultural genocide. The autonomous republic was dissolved in 1945, and Crimea became an oblast. In 1954 it was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, on the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav of 1654.

• 4. A Peninsula's Many Names

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  Qırım is the Crimean Tatar name for the peninsula today, with Крым (Krym) in Russian and Крим (Krym) in Ukrainian. The English spelling Crimea comes from the Italian form, la Crimea, in use since at least the 17th century. The classical name, Tauric Peninsula, was gradually replaced over the course of the 19th century.

  Staryi Krym, meaning Old Crimea, served as capital of the Crimean province of the Golden Horde. Writing between 1315 and 1329 CE, the Arab author Abū al-Fidā recounted a political fight in 1300 to 1301 CE that ended with a rival's decapitation and his head sent to the Crimea. Some sources hold the capital's name later spread to the whole peninsula under Ottoman suzerainty, which ran from 1441 to 1783. The word itself derives from the Turkic term qirum, meaning fosse or trench.

  Tauris, or Taurica, comes from the Greek Ταυρική, after the peninsula's Tauri inhabitants. The Russian Empire revived it during a mass hellenisation of Crimean Tatar place names after annexing the Khanate. Imperial authorities established the Taurida Oblast in 1764 and reorganised it as the Taurida Governorate in 1802. The Soviets replaced it with Krym and stripped it of official status from 1921. The name lingers still, in the Taurida National University founded in 1918, the Tavriya Simferopol football club named in 1963, and the Tavrida federal highway built under Russian occupation from 2017.

• 5. Three Worlds In One

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  Covering 27,000 km2, Crimea splits cleanly into three zones: the steppe, the Crimean Mountains, and the Southern Coast. Seventy-five percent of the remaining area is semiarid prairie, a southward continuation of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Numerous kurgans, the burial mounds of the ancient Scythians, are scattered across these flatlands.

  The Crimean Mountains rise with extraordinary abruptness from the deep floor of the Black Sea, reaching altitudes between 600 and 1545 m. They begin at Cape Fiolent, in the southwest. Some Greek myths place a temple of Artemis on that cape, where Iphigeneia served as priestess. Uchan-su, on the southern slope, is the highest waterfall in Crimea.

  South of the sheltering range, the land changes character entirely. A narrow strip of coast and mountain slope, green and mild, became a kind of riviera under Russian rule. In Soviet times its palaces gave way to dachas and health resorts reserved as perquisites for the politically loyal. The Vorontsov Palace stands at Alupka, and Foros marks the southernmost point. This coast belongs to the Crimean Submediterranean forest complex ecoregion, with a climate and vegetation resembling the Mediterranean Basin.

• 6. Sun, Water, And Salt

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  Mean annual temperatures across Crimea range from 10 °C in the far north at Armiansk to 13 °C in the far south at Yalta, dropping to around 5.7 °C in the mountains. The southern coast carries a Mediterranean climate of mild winters and dry summers, shielded from cold northern air by the mountains. Most of the peninsula receives more than 2,000 sunshine hours a year, peaking at 2,505 hours at Qarabiy yayla in the mountains.

  There are 257 rivers and major streams on the peninsula, fed primarily by rainwater, with snowmelt playing a very minor role. Many dry up completely in summer. The Salhyr is the longest at 204 km, while the Belbek has the greatest average discharge at 2.16 m3/s. More than fifty salt lakes and salt pans dot the land, the largest being Lake Sasyk on the southwest coast.

  Lake Syvash, the so-called Putrid Sea or Rotten Sea, sprawls across roughly 2,560 km2 of shallow, interconnected lagoons on the northeastern coast. Much of the natural border between the peninsula and the Ukrainian mainland runs through it. The North Crimea Canal, carrying water from the Dnieper, is the largest irrigation channel here. After Ukraine blocked the canal in 2014, Crimea faced an unprecedented water shortage crisis. Flow was restored after the 2022 Russian invasion, though the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam could bring new problems.

• 7. Bridges And Resorts

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  Work began in May 2015 on a multibillion-dollar road-rail link across the Strait of Kerch. The road bridge opened in May 2018, the rail bridge in December 2019. At 19 km it is the longest bridge in Europe, surpassing the Vasco da Gama Bridge in Lisbon. The Crimean Bridge was damaged by an attack on the 8th of October 2022, and again on the 17th of July 2023.

  The world's longest trolleybus route, founded in 1959, runs about 90 km through the mountains from Simferopol to Alushta and on to Yalta, with passengers assigned a seat. Almost every settlement is connected to another by bus, and the cities of Yalta, Feodosia, Kerch, Sevastopol, Chornomorske and Yevpatoria are linked by sea routes.

  Crimea's life as a holiday destination began in the second half of the 19th century, as transport networks carried tourists from central Russia. Artek, a Young Pioneer camp at Hurzuf near Ayu-Dag, was established in 1925 and ran year-round thanks to the warm climate. At its heyday 27,000 children vacationed there each year, and between 1925 and 1969 it hosted 300,000 children. Tourist arrivals to Crimea reached a record 6.1 million in 2012, dropped to 3.8 million in 2014 after annexation and sanctions, and rebounded to 5.6 million by 2016.

• 8. Occupation And Identity

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  On the 26th of February 2014, Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Holovko estimates, a protest in Simferopol for the integrity of Ukraine drew 12,000 people, opposed by several thousand pro-Russian protesters. The demonstrations followed the removal of the Russia-leaning president Viktor Yanukovych in Kyiv. On the 27th of February, Russian forces seized parliament, government buildings, and strategic points across Crimea. The Russian-organised Republic of Crimea declared independence after an illegal, internationally unrecognised referendum, and Russia annexed the peninsula. Most countries refused to follow, with a United Nations vote of 100 in favour, 11 against, and 58 abstentions affirming Crimea as part of Ukraine.

  The 2014 Russian census recorded 84% of inhabitants naming Russian as their native language, 7.9% Crimean Tatar, and 3.3% Ukrainian. The Crimean Tatars, a predominantly Muslim minority, made up 12.1% of the population in 2001. Stalin's government had forcibly expelled them to Central Asia in 1944 as collective punishment, on the grounds that some had joined Tatar Legions in the Waffen-SS during World War II. They began returning after the Soviet Union fell.

  Jamala, a Crimean Tatar singer, won the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 representing Ukraine with her song 1944, about that very deportation. In August 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was necessary to liberate Crimea from Russian occupation and to re-establish world law and order. The 2024 elections to the State Council of Crimea gave United Russia 68 of 75 seats, and the council re-elected Sergey Aksyonov, who had held the post of Head of the Republic of Crimea since 2014.