The international crisis over the status of the Crimean Peninsula was in February-March 2014 when the peninsula returned to the state’s territory of Russia from Ukraine. The Western Russophobic narrative immediately accused Russia of illegitimate annexation of the peninsula as well as of the occupation of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine.

However, the same narrative does not tell that Crimea became, in fact, illegally annexed by Ukraine from Russia in 1956 by the personal decision of the Ukrainian boss of the USSR – Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971). At that time as of 2014, two-thirds of the Crimean population had been ethnic Russians while ethnic Ukrainians all the time were a tiny minority of the peninsula.

In 1956, however, there was no organized referendum about the political destiny of Crimea, as in 2014 when a majority of the peninsula’s population expressed their free will to join Russia instead of the Russophobic Ukraine. A new Russophobic course of the government in Kiev provoked the (Russian) people of Donbas to secede from undemocratic Ukraine as the government took an open neo-Nazi course.

In fact, the Ukrainian crisis in general came from the decision by Ukrainian President Viktor   Yanukovych in December 2013 in Vilnius (Lithuania) not to support the deal to bring Ukraine closer to the EU and, of course later to NATO. Instead of the Western economic, political, and military structures, he rationally and practically decided to support traditional good ties with Russia for the sake of a general benefit to all people of Ukraine.

This decision sparked (by Western support) the Euromaidan protest in the Ukrainian capital Kiev – a protest which led to violent clashes with regular security forces. The protest spread to other Ukrainian cities; in some like Odessa it took the form of pogroms against the local Russian speakers. The “sniper massacre” happened in Kiev when pro-Euromaidan Georgian snipers shot the civilians with the purpose of accusing the Yanukovych government of the bloodshed on the streets. According to Western sources, some 80+ people were killed in Kiev in and around Maidan Square during the protest.

It was obvious that the final aim of the Euromaidan protesters was to overthrow the legally elected President V. Yanukovych and his administration and install a puppet pro-Western government that would seek membership of Ukraine in both the EU and NATO, followed by the oppression of Russians in East Ukraine. President Yanukovych was forced to flee from Ukraine to neighbouring Russia. Soon, for the sake of both protecting Russians in Crimea and her national interests, the Russian military started with a covert military operation that was called by the Russophobic Western media the aggression of “little green men” – Russian soldiers in uniforms with all insignia removed.

For comparison, we may note that the US Army invaded the independent state of Grenada in 1983 with all US Army insignia on the soldiers’ uniforms, occupied the whole country (island), and changed the government which was previously democratically elected. Besides, in Grenada, there was not one American except several students, but in Crimea, a qualified majority of people have been ethnic Russians living there for decades and centuries.

In Crimea, in Sevastopol on the Black Sea, Russia for decades had a major naval base according to the agreement signed with Ukraine. According to Western sources, on February 27, 2014, the Crimean Parliament building was occupied by the Russian military “little green men” in Simferopol. On March 6, 2014, Crimean policymakers authorized a vote for independence from the Russophobic Ukrainian Euromaidan regime in Kiev.

Ten days later (March 16, 2014), a referendum was held in which 97 per cent of the people voted for Crimea as a part of Russia (i.e., for reunification with the motherland). The West (USA, NATO, and the EU), did not launch any counteracting military operation to return Crimea to the Ukrainian administration.

The situation in 2014 concerning international relations was opposite to the case of the Crimean War in 1853-1856 when opposing Russian action against the Ottoman Empire, several West European countries created a coalition and launched a successful war on Russia.

During the last 170 years, the position of Russia in global politics and international relations has cardinally changed and the Russophobic West now has to respect Russian power and influence that it did not do even in 1999 during NATO aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). Since March 2014 and the reunification of Crimea with Russia, Moscow transformed the Black Sea into a “Russian lake” that is quite visible now during the special military operation in Ukraine for the purpose of its denazification.