Analytical Viewpoint Regarding The Crimea Move Of The Russian Federation

While the international system has transformed from bipolarity to multipolarity after the Cold War, the struggle for influence has started to intensify on the former Soviet geography with each passing day, as well. Organizations like NATO and EU have succeeded in including some countries that used to be under the dominance of Russia at one time due to the enlargement strategy; whereas the Russian Federation has adopted the act of taking concrete steps around the notion of Neo-Eurasianism in the immediate surroundings as a principle especially as from the Putin era. As the NATO-EU duo has acted in order to establish a close cooperation (such as Joint Military Exercises-Eastern Partnership) with some countries like Georgia and Ukraine, RF has evaluated the possibility of the aforementioned two countries to be integrated into the Western system as the breach of red lines. This condition has made Moscow to experience inevitably problems with Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014) also due to emergence of other factors. Upon increasing tensions in Ukraine, RF has acted with the motion of protecting their national interests and has made decision to take primarily Crimea and Sivastopol under its dominance, and thus this move has transformed the present internal crisis into an international crisis in Ukraine. In this study, we will evaluate the main reasons for the RF to annex Crimea and accordingly relevant approaches of parties in the light of scientific methods.

Keywords

Crimea, Russian Federation, Ukraine, Policy of Annexation, Geopolitics