Crimea's annexation: Bad memory

 The land grab that started Russia's conflict with the West has fallen to the bottom of the agenda

RUSSIA was absent from last weekend’s summit of the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies, having been disinvited after its seizure of Crimea in March 2014. So it was no surprise that theG7 leaders’ joint declaration on Monday devoted a sentence to condemning that “illegal annexation”. But when it came to the conditions for easing the sanctions they have imposed on Russia, the G7's declaration spoke only of implementing the Minsk cease-fire agreement in Ukraine. Nor was Crimea mentioned by John Kerry, the American secretary of state, after his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Sochi last month. The issue seemed to have slipped to the bottom of the agenda.

In Crimea, too, people are beginning to feel that they have slipped to the bottom of everyone’s agenda. The jubilation of pro-Russian residents during the referendum campaign for annexation in March 2014 is hard to recall. Western sanctions, obstructed trade with Ukraine, disappointing financial support from Moscow, and the indignities of a botched integration process (such as the Russian passports residents have received, which European governments refuse to honour because they are stamped "Crimea") have all taken a toll. Today the mood is best expressed by the triumphal but grim slogan seen on a billboard here: “What next? Even if stones fall from the sky...we're in the Homeland!”

Former supporters of the annexation now sound sombre. The red tape and corruption have grown unbearable, complains Natasha Fiodorovna (not her real name), who backed reintegration with Russia. Then she brightens: “Not to worry. Sasha has not emigrated forever, he will come back.” Like many educated young Crimeans, her son, an IT specialist, found the combination of sanctions and internet censorship had made his work impossible. He left for Montenegro.

Much of the disappointment is rooted in the economy. The average salary in Crimea is roughly two-thirds that in Russia. The Russian government initially made good on promises to hike doctors’ and teachers’ salaries after the annexation, but those raises were cut back in April. Since January prices for food have risen over 19%, almost twice as steeply as in Russia. Sanctions have sharply curtailed business investment, and Kiev periodically threatens to cut off the peninsula’s electricity. Among those who opposed the annexation, some want Ukraine to impose a total blockade. “Let Putin try to deliver it all,” says a retired businessman from the Tatar ethnic minority, most of whom boycotted the referendum.

The peninsula’s main industry, tourism, is looking at its second meagre summer in a row. The ferry service from Russia’s mainland brings nothing like enough tourists to make up for the absent Ukrainians and the Europeans whose cruise ships once docked in Yalta. Western credit cards do not work. Many businesses have been expropriated by “self-defence” units, paramilitaries controlled by the peninsula’s Russian-installed prime minister, Sergei Aksyonov.

Meanwhile, authorities are eliminating the political and cultural space for Crimea’s Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians. In March a group of Ukrainians who laid flowers at a statue of Taras Shevchenko, their national poet, were fined some $200 each for “employing Ukrainian attributes”. Last month, authorities detained seven Ukrainians for taking selfies while wearing vyshyvanki, their traditional embroidered shirts. Police also detained a dozen Tatars who gathered in Simferopol’s Lenin Square on May 18th to commemorate Deportation Day, the anniversary of the date in 1944 when Stalin deported all 180,000 Crimean Tatars to central Asia.

The triumphalism of the krimnashi, or “Crimea-Is-Oursers” (as zealous supporters of annexation are known), still has some momentum. And on a peninsula where one-third of the population are retirees, nostalgia for Soviet times is strong. A billboard to Stalin (pictured) now graces the entrance to Sevastopol, a finger in the eye of the Tatars he once deported. But the initial fervour for annexation has ebbed as its costs become clear. Some 85% of Crimea’s budget is now supplied by Russia’s federal government, according to Natalia Zubarevich, an economics professor at Moscow State University. In April Dmitri Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister, put the overall costs incurred due to the annexation (including the cost of sanctions) at $27 billion in 2014 alone.

Russian citizens may grow less happy about bearing such costs as time goes on. An opinion poll in May found only 16% of Russians would support budget cuts in Russia proper in favour of developing Crimea. But after the propaganda commitment Mr Putin has made, it would be politically inconceivable to roll back the annexation. Meanwhile, America and Europe made clear at the G7 meeting that they will never recognise it. The European Commission expects to renew its sanctions on Crimea within the next two weeks. The Crimean impasse has become another of Russia’s “frozen conflicts”, and no one seems to have a plausible scenario for defrosting it. What next? The peninsula’s denizens might do best to cover their heads, and watch out for falling stones.

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