The head of the coordination board of the International Association of Friends of Crimea, former Slovak Prime Minister Jan Czarnogursky (served in 1991-1992), said that the US pushed Ukraine to provocations on the Crimea issue. He said this in an interview with RIA Novosti.
According to the politician, Washington wants to establish its own military base in Crimea and “take control of the Black Sea”. He also expressed the view that Western states have an “appetite” for Crimea, but that they “will forget about it because they were defeated in the conflict in Ukraine”.
“The referendum in Crimea passed legally. “The reunification of Crimea with Russia has happened and the West has to accept it,” he said.
Statements about the US and NATO’s plans to open a military base or diplomatic mission in Crimea are regularly made by Russian and foreign politicians at various levels.
In 2019, Ukraine’s former Deputy Foreign Minister Volodymyr Khandogiy (who took office in 2009) said on the broadcast of UkrLife TV channel that the American leadership hopes to open its diplomatic mission on the peninsula before Crimea becomes part of Russia. According to him, after NATO refused to provide Kiev with a plan to join the alliance in 2008, he met with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and signed a charter on cooperation between the two countries.
The Ukrainian diplomat added that the document contains, among other things, a clause on the “establishment of an honorary or other diplomatic presence of the United States” in Crimea.
In 2016, former CIA officer Raymond McGovern told Regnum that before Crimea was annexed to Russia, NATO and the United States had “opinions” about Crimea and hoped to open a military base there.
In 2014, Crimean Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov tweeted that he had found a canceled tender on the US government’s procurement website for the rebuilding of a school in Sevastopol, which was allegedly the US Navy’s engineering base.
After that, Russian media published a series of materials with headlines such as “They wanted to turn the Sevastopol school back into a US military base.”
The tender was awarded in September 2013 and was canceled in April 2014 “due to the current situation”. This happened after the referendums on the entry of Crimea into Russia.
According to Voice of America (the organization is included in the list of foreign agents by the Justice Department), this document allegedly refers to “the usual repair of the school, not its reconstruction as a military base.” The radio station calls the reason for this fact:
The US Navy, along with other federal departments, is also engaged in “humanitarian projects”, so it was planned to renovate the Crimean school with money from the American military budget.
Rumors of the emergence of a NATO base in Crimea surfaced in the mid-2000s, and the first protests against the “alliance offensive” on the peninsula took place in Feodosia in 2006. The locals then rallied the port of Feodosia, not wanting to let NATO sailors land as part of the Sea Breeze exercises.
“At that time I was the deputy commander of the border commander’s Feodosia office. In early May 2006, I received information that NATO exercises were planned on the territory of the Feodosia region and the creation of a temporary base, which will gradually become permanent,” said.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko described the protests as “provocation”, but the Verkhovna Rada did not authorize NATO to deploy troops in Crimea. The foreign army left Ukraine.
The issue of NATO’s interests in the Black Sea and Crimea also worries the foreign press.
On March 17, American journalist Phil McCausland wrote in an article for NBC that NATO perceives the Black Sea as a strategically important region where the alliance’s influence is not yet strong enough.
“On the other hand, there is no NATO because of the weakness of Bulgaria and Romania and the intransigence of Turkey. That is why there is no NATO presence in the Black Sea, ”says in the material, quoting Glen Grant, the former British military adviser in Ukraine.
Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali Güller, in his article in the newspaper Cumhuriyet, drew attention to the fact that the USA has set the goal of making the Black Sea an “inland sea” by accepting the Black Sea countries one by one into NATO.
In an article he wrote in the newspaper Cumhuriyet, Güller said, “The United States is trying to turn the Black Sea into a NATO lake.” For this reason, he emphasized that the leadership of the organization plans to accept Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance.
At the same time, the American newspaper Politico published an article claiming that the United States did not want Ukraine to try to take over Crimea. Senior sources claimed that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke about it. According to him, the United States “does not see it as a wise move” to try to retake Crimea from Russia.
In 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin told American director Oliver Stone that after Ukraine’s admission to NATO “everything could happen in Crimea – new missile defense systems and new bases”, so Moscow “has to take countermeasures” left,” he said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said that in March 2022 – after the “coup” in 2014 – according to him – if Crimea were not part of Russia – there would be NATO military bases on the peninsula.
The alliance has not officially announced plans to deploy a military base in Crimea. But the NATO leadership did not give a full-fledged rebuttal either.
But in August 2022, Ukraine’s former Deputy Defense Minister Alina Frolova stated at the Crimean Platform summit that Kiev understood the strategic importance of Crimea for controlling the Black Sea. According to him, the Armed Forces and Navy of Ukraine should be deployed in the Crimea, and the Ukrainian authorities want to see “a multinational presence on the peninsula of our partners, not only in NATO, but also in NATO.” At the same time, Frolova added that the Ukrainian leadership wanted Crimea to be an example of “non-aggressive militarization”, but did not mention plans to build a military base.
Source: Gazeta
Emma Matthew is a political analyst for “Social Bites”. With a keen understanding of the inner workings of government and a passion for politics, she provides insightful and informative coverage of the latest political developments.