Russian annexation of Crimea (2014)

In late February and March 2014, Russian forces took control of the Crimean peninsula, part of Ukraine, and Russia then incorporated it as two new federal subjects after a referendum held under Russian military control. The takeover came in the days after Ukraine's president Viktor Yanukovych was removed from power in Kyiv. Most of the world, including the UN General Assembly, has refused to recognise the annexation, which marked the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Crimea had belonged to the Crimean Khanate until the Russian Empire annexed it in 1783. In the Soviet era its Crimean Tatar population was deported in 1944, and in 1954 the peninsula was transferred from the Russian to the Ukrainian Soviet republic. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union it stayed in independent Ukraine as an autonomous republic, while Russia's Black Sea Fleet remained based at Sevastopol under treaties of 1997. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and the 1997 friendship treaty, Russia undertook to respect Ukraine's borders and territorial integrity.

In late 2013 the Euromaidan protests began in Kyiv after Yanukovych failed to sign an association agreement with the European Union. On 22 February 2014, after Yanukovych left the capital, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove him and appointed a caretaker government. The Russian government described these events as a coup.

According to Putin's own later account, at an overnight meeting with his security chiefs on 22–23 February he said that work must begin on "returning Crimea to Russia". On 27 February armed men in uniforms without insignia seized the Crimean parliament and government buildings in Simferopol. With the building occupied and no independent journalists present, the parliament dismissed the regional government and installed Sergey Aksyonov, whose Russian Unity party had won about 4 per cent of the vote at the previous election. Unmarked troops then blocked the land routes to mainland Ukraine and seized airports and Ukrainian military bases.

Russian officials at first said the troops were local self-defence units. On 1 March Russia's Federation Council authorised the use of the armed forces in Ukraine, and by 2 March Russian troops controlled the peninsula. Putin later acknowledged that the soldiers had been Russian.

The vote, brought forward to 16 March, offered a choice between joining Russia and restoring a 1992 Crimean constitution within Ukraine; there was no option to keep the existing arrangements. Ukraine's Constitutional Court ruled it unconstitutional, and the OSCE declined to send observers. Official results reported a turnout of 83 per cent and 95.5 per cent in favour of joining Russia, while most Crimean Tatars boycotted it; a member of a Russian presidential human rights council suggested the real figures were considerably lower. Crimea declared independence on 17 March, and on 18 March a treaty was signed admitting the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol into the Russian Federation. Putin's speech that day presented the vote as an exercise of self-determination and described Crimea as having always been part of Russia. Ukraine ordered its forces to withdraw on 24 March.

On 15 March Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity. On 27 March the UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution, by 100 votes to 11 with 58 abstentions, declaring that the referendum had no validity. Ukraine and many other states regard the annexation as a breach of international law and of Russia's own commitments. The other G8 members suspended Russia from the group, Western governments imposed sanctions, and NATO suspended co-operation. Only a handful of states have recognised the annexation.

Russia rapidly integrated the territory into its legal, economic and military systems and built the Crimean Bridge to the Russian mainland. The UN and human rights organisations have reported abuses including arbitrary detentions, torture and disappearances, with Crimean Tatars disproportionately affected. Ukraine continues to treat Crimea as temporarily occupied territory, and in 2021 it launched the Crimea Platform to seek its return. In February 2022 Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Our 2010 map, the most recent, shows Crimea as part of Ukraine, as it was before the 2014 annexation.