Vladimir Putin did not greet crowds in Crimea or command a navy ship across the sparkling Black Sea to celebrate the annexation of the peninsula this year. There were some images of local literal strong men – bodybuilders – breaking records this week by dragging military planes down the runways and bench pressing on what looked like a truck chassis to show their patriotism, but the President of Russia himself marked the seventh anniversary of Crimea annexation with videoconference from your office. He then went on to a concert in Moscow to stimulate some pro-Russian fervor.
It was on his video link to Crimea when Putin was finally asked to respond to President Joe Biden by calling him a murderer in an interview on Wednesday. The Russian president did not indicate an offense, although others in the Russian government did so in the strongest terms. Putin, meanwhile, said he wished Biden “good health” and then said that when people criticize others, they are usually talking about themselves. Then came a speech against the United States and its people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks before a concert that marks the seventh anniversary of the referendum on the status of the states of Crimea and Sevastopol and their reunification with Russia in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 18, 2021.
(Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
“They think we are just like them, but we are a different people. We have a different genetic code and different cultural and moral values,” said Putin. “With regard to the American establishment, the ruling class, its identity was formed under well-known circumstances,” continued Putin. “The colonization of the American continent by Europeans was linked to the extermination of the local peoples. It was a genocide, in modern terms, it was a flagrant genocide of the indigenous tribes ”.
Biden threatened more sanctions against Russia this week after U.S. intelligence concluded that Putin himself was likely to lead a team to influence the 2020 presidential election by doing everything possible to undermine Biden’s campaign. Moscow said it is not afraid of new sanctions.
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There is no indication that the sanctions – whether for the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny or for the annexation of Crimea – have forced the Kremlin to take certain actions or prevent others, but James Nixey, a Russian expert at Chatham House London, says that is not the point.
“Sanctions should not be judged whether or not they forced Putin to change course because that is a very high limit for judging sanctions. The value of sanctions is to express discontent and not just to revere and acquiesce to all Russian transgressions on the international stage. “
The Russian government rejected the pain caused by the sanctions, but according to Anton Alekseev, an Estonian state television correspondent who recently produced a documentary on Crimea, the penalties do affect and he saw evidence while he was there.
A woman participates in the celebration of the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, in Sevastopol, Crimea, Thursday, March 18, 2021.
(AP)
“Russia says you don’t feel the sanctions over there,” he told a panel at Chatham House that discussed the situation in Crimea. “That’s not true. I felt the sanctions. Your bank cards don’t work. Taxi calling apps don’t work. You won’t see stores from major well-known chains. It’s, in a way, a gray zone.”
The consensus on the Crimean panel of experts was that the level of enthusiasm about joining Russia has substantially decreased over the past seven years on the peninsula, where initially there was widespread support among the predominantly Russian population. Many were waiting for the “return of a mythicized past,” said New Yorker correspondent Joshua Yaffa, who wrote extensively about Crimea. He was referring to a kind of imagined USSR 2.0 that never existed.
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“They came down from the clouds to the land,” said Anton Alekseev of the inhabitants of Crimea. He added that he was impressed by the level of patriotism in the city of Sevastopol, home of Russia’s naval base, when he visited it in 2014. He said that there is more pro-Russian sentiment than you would find in Moscow.
“But now people have suffered,” he said, referring to his findings on a trip last year. “Their land and properties were taken from them because the Russian military claimed them. There are many of these stories.” And, noted Alekseev, no one can fight the claims in Crimea. It’s all in the name of national security.
Russia, according to NATO, has been intensifying its military presence on the peninsula since annexation. If this hindered residents’ view of Moscow, Muscovites may also be less enthusiastic about Crimea, whose multiple and necessary infrastructure projects have cost the Russian taxpayer dearly.
In the years that followed the annexation, there was a great patriotic impulse across the country. Putin’s rating has risen and people have called it the “Crimea effect”. Crimea has been not only strategic, but romantically or emotionally important in the minds of Russians who have historically vacationed at resorts in their microclimate.
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But other real-life issues, from economic problems to a pandemic and the poisoning of an important opposition figure, many say, have surpassed the glory of having Crimea back. Critics say Putin needs another victory. Or at least to claim one. Perhaps that is why, at the end of the day, he challenged Biden to a kind of duel – a debate broadcast live, just the two of them – to continue, he said “the discussion”.