Crimea

choi

Russia: The Soviets Return Victorious Using Plan B. Strategy Page, Mar 6, 2014.
strategypage.com/qnd/russia/articles/20140306.aspx
Quote:
"The two million people living in Crimea are 12 percent Crimean Tatars. These are descendants of Mongol and Turk troops that invaded the region in the 13th century. The invaders blended in with the existing inhabitants, who were a mélange of Greeks and even more ancient peoples who had been there for thousands of years. The Tatars became Moslem in the 14th century. Eventually the Ottoman Turkish Empire took control of Crimea but that was lost in 1775 when the Russian Empire drove the Turks out. * * *
When the communists took over in the 1920s they proceeded to kill or deport half the Tatars remaining in Crimea. * * * In 1944 all remaining Tatars were moved to Central Asia and while that expulsion was revoked in the late 1960s Tatars only began returning after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

"Ukraine and the West is angry about how Russia is so blatantly violating a 1994 agreement in which Ukraine allowed the ICBMs and other nuclear weapons based in its territory to be removed and destroyed. * * * at the time there were many Ukrainians who wanted to hold onto the nukes (despite the enormous costs and technical problems) as a way to discourage Russian from trying to regain control of Ukraine. It is because of this agreement that Russia is making an effort to hide its role in the takeover of Crimea.

"The 11,000 Russian troops stationed in Crimea are mostly support personnel for the naval base. The exception is 2,000 marines. In the last week another 7,000 troops, mostly infantry and special operations forces were flown in or arrived by ship.

Note:
(a) "The name Tatar likely originated amongst the nomadic Tatar confederation in the north-eastern Gobi desert in the 5th century."  Wikipedia
(b) Crimea
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea

Quote:

"A number of Turkic peoples, now collectively known as the Crimean Tatars, came to inhabit the peninsula starting with the early Middle Ages. At times these dominated the peninsula demographically, while at other times their numbers dwindled (1750–1944) or disappeared altogether (1944–91), only to reappear again (1991–present).

"The Crimean Khanate was a Tatar state founded by Hacı I Giray, a descendant of Genghis Khan, from 1441 to 1783. It 1478 the Khanate became a tributary of the Ottoman Empire, [then fell under Russian influence] by the terms of the 1774 Russo-Ottoman Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca [qv; the treaty concluded Russo-Turkish War (1768–74)], and was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783

"On Feb 19, 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issued a decree transferring the Crimean Oblast from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The transfer of the Crimean Oblast to Ukraine has been described as a 'symbolic gesture,' marking the 300th anniversary of Ukraine becoming a part of the Russian Empire. The General Secretary of the Communist Party in Soviet Union was at the time the Ukranian Nikita Khrushchev.

(c) For a map of Crimean Khanate territory [more than the Crimea peninsula), see one in Ukraine
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine
(a breadbasket; The name Ukraine means "borderland;" Kievan Rus' [882-1283; a loose federation of East Slavic tribes; 'By the seventeenth century they [East Slavs] evolved into the Russian, Ukraine, and Gelarusian peoples']; ruled by Lithuania (starting mid-14th century) and then Poland (1569- ); "The Crimean Khanate was one of the strongest powers in Eastern Europe[, all the time raiding Ukraine's southern borderlands,] until the 18th century; at one point it even succeeded, under the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray, in capturing and devastating Moscow"/ into Russian's hand when three parts of the present-day Ukraine, besides Crimean Khanate, fell like dominoes: hetmanate (1764), Zaporizhska Sich *1775) and Ukrainian land west of Dnieper River as part of partitioning of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795))

Look at the maps of Ukraine from Kievan Rus' to Lithuanian to Polish to Russian rules--until Soviet Union's Khrushchev--Crimea was never part of Ukraine.
(d) Cossack Hetmanate
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack_Hetmanate
(1649-1764; Its inhabitants referred to it in Ukrainian as "Ukraine" or "Vkraine")

choi

Andrew Higgins, Steeped in Its Bloody History, Again Embracing Resistance. Mew York Times, Mar 7, 2014 (under the heading Sevastopol Journal; one of front-page top articles).
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/world/europe/crimea-russia.html
("Russian soldiers patrol the airport parking lot and, although still without markings on their uniforms, have dropped all pretense that they are not Russian. Asked where he was from, a masked soldier at the airport said he was with the Russian infantry and had been sent to Crimea a week ago on a mission to protect the region 'against the enemy, Ukraine'”)

Note:
(a) Sevastopol
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevastopol
(The city continues to be the home of the Russian—formerly Soviet—Black Sea Fleet; section 1 Etymology)

Quote:

"One of the most notable events involving the city is the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–55) carried out by the British, French, Sardinian, and Turkish troops during the Crimean War, which lasted for 11 months. * * * The Russians [when in retreat] had to sink their entire fleet to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy and at the same time to block the entrance of the Western ships into the inlet [the harbor of Sevastopol].

"During World War II, Sevastopol withstood intensive bombardment by the Germans in 1941–42, during the Axis siege which lasted for 250 days before the city fell in July 1942. * * * It was liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1944 and was awarded with the Hero City title a year later.

(b) With "its lovely seafront promenade dominated by a 'monument to sunken ships' and its central square named after the imperial admiral who commanded Russian forces against French, British and Turkish troops in the 19th century, Sevastopol constantly feeds thoughts of war and its agonies. Bombarded with reminders of the Crimean War, which involved a near yearlong siege of the city in 1854-55, and World War II, when the city doggedly resisted Nazi forces until finally falling in July 1942, Sevastopol has never stopped thinking about wartime losses — and has never been able to cope with the amputation carried out in 1954 by the Soviet leader Nikita S Khrushchev. Wielding a pen instead of a knife, Khrushchev ordered Sevastopol and the rest of Crimea transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. At the time, the operation caused little pain, as both Russia and Ukraine belonged to the Soviet Union, which chloroformed ethnic, linguistic and cultural divisions with repression.When Ukraine became a separate independent nation near the end of 1991, however, Sevastopol — the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since the 18th century — began howling"
(i) For the monument, see a photo in the previous Wiki page.
(ii) For the admiral commemorated in the central square (there was a statute of him there), see Pavel Nakhimov
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Nakhimov
(1802-1855; one of the most famous admirals in Russian naval history, best remembered as the commander of naval and land forces during the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War; [prior to that, he] annihilated the Ottoman fleet at Sinope in 1853; fatally wounded by a sniper bullet on July 10, 1855 during the Siege of Sevastopol and died two days later [Sevastopol )
(A) Pavel "is a Slavic cognate of the name Paul ([through] the Greek Pavlos)."   Wikipedia
(B) Paul (name)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_(name)
(The name exists since the Roman times and derives from the Roman family name Paulus or Paullus; The Roman family name Paulus derives from the Latin adjective meaning "small" or "humble")
(C) Battle of Malakoff
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Malakoff
(Sept 7, 1955; The Battle of Malakoff resulted in the fall of Sevastopol on 9 September, bringing the 11-month siege to an end; section 3 Aftermath: Tolstoy)
(iii) Soon after Russia annexed the Crimean Khanate, Prince Gregory Potemkin in 1783 founded Black Sea Fleet together with its principal base, the city of Sevastopol.  Wikipedia
(iv) Ukraine
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine

Quoting section 1.8 World War II:

"In 1940, Romania ceded Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in response to Soviet demands. The Ukrainian SSR incorporated northern and southern districts of Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and the Hertsa region. But it ceded the western part of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to the newly created Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. All these territorial gains were internationally recognised by the Paris peace treaties of 1947.

"German armies invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 * * * In the encirclement battle of Kiev, the city was acclaimed as a 'Hero City'

"Although the majority of Ukrainians fought alongside the Red Army and Soviet resistance, some elements of the Ukrainian nationalist underground created an anti-Soviet nationalist formation in Galicia, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (1942). At times it allied with the Nazi forces, it also carried out the massacres of ethnic Poles, and, after the war, continued to fight the USSR [using guerrilla war until 1949].

(A) This Galicia is not in Spain, but in Eastern Europe: "a historical and geographic region * * * once a small kingdom that currently straddles the border between Poland and Ukraine"   Wikipedia
(B) Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire, and Austria–Hungary from 1772 to 1918)   Wikipedia

(c) "Balaklava, near Sevastopol, was the site of one of the Crimean War’s most famous battles. It was a rare Russian victory during the conflict and delivered a devastating blow to the morale of British forces, which launched the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade across what the English poet Tennyson called the 'valley of death.'”
(i) Balaklava
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaklava

Quote:

"is a former city on the Crimean Peninsula and part of the city of Sevastopol which carries a special administrative status in Ukraine. It was a city in its own right until 1957 when it was formally incorporated into the municipal borders of Sevastopol by the Soviet government.

"In 1475 the growing Ottoman Empire took possession of Balaklava renaming it Balıklava ("(good) fishing ground" in Turkish)

"The town became famous for the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War thanks to the suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade, a British cavalry charge due to a misunderstanding sent up a valley strongly held on three sides by the Russians, in which about 250 men were killed or wounded, and over 400 horses lost, effectively reducing the size of the mounted brigade by two thirds and destroying some of the finest light cavalry in the world to no military purpose.[3]

The British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalized this battle in verse.

(ii) Battle of Balaclava

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Balaclava

(Oct 25, 1854; The battle began with a Russian artillery and infantry attack on the Ottoman redoubts that formed Balaclava's first line of defence; Ottoman forces retreated; Russians met the second defensive line held by the Ottoman and the British in what came to be known as the 'Thin Red Line,' This line held and forced the Russians onto the defensive; section 2.3 North Valley; section 2.3.1 Charge of the Light Brigade; section 4 Cultural references)

Please view the painting--and you will realize why it was "Light Brigade"--and the first and last maps.