Vladimir Putin did not greet crowds in Crimea or power on a naval ship over a glistening Black Sea to celebrate the annexation of the peninsula this year. There were some images of local, literal strongmen – bodybuilders – breaking records this week by towing military aircraft over asphalt equipment and who looked like a truck chassis to show their patriotism, but the Russian president even celebrated the seventh anniversary of the Crimea. annexation with a video conference from his office. He then walks out to a concert in Moscow to fuel some pro-Russia zeal.
It was on his video link to the Crimea when Putin was finally asked to respond to President Joe Biden calling him a killer in an interview on Wednesday. The Russian president did not take offense, although others in the Russian government did so strongly. Putin, in turn, said he wanted to wish Biden good health and said that when people criticize others, they generally talk. Next came a tirade against the United States and its people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks in front of a concert celebrating the seventh anniversary of the referendum on the state of Crimea and Sevastopol and its reunification with Russia, in Moscow, Russia, on Thursday, March 18, 2021.
(Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
“They think we are the same as them, but we are a different people. We have a different genetic code and cultural and moral values,” Putin said. “As for the American establishment, the ruling class, its identity has been formed under known circumstances,” Putin continued. “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 blatant genocide of the Indian tribes.”
Biden has threatened more sanctions against Russia this week after US intelligence concluded that it was likely Putin himself led a team to influence the 2020 presidential election by doing everything possible to damage the Biden campaign. Moscow has said it is not afraid of further sanctions.
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There was no indication that sanctions – whether for the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny or the annexation of Crimea – forced the Kremlin to take certain actions or stop others, but James Nixey, a Russian expert on the London Chatham House, says that is not the point.
“Sanctions should not be judged on whether or not they have forced Putin to change course, because it is too high a threshold to judge sanctions. The value of sanctions is to express dissatisfaction and not just to increase every Russian transgression against the international. ‘
The Russian government has denied the pain caused by the sanctions, but according to Anton Alekseev, an Estonian state television correspondent who recently produced a documentary on Crimea, the fines actually bite and he has evidence. seen while he was there.
A woman attends the celebration of the 2014 Crimean annexation of Ukraine in Sevastopol, Crimea, on Thursday, March 18, 2021.
(AP)
“Russia says you do not feel the sanctions there,” he told a panel in Chatham House discussing the state of affairs in Crimea. “That’s not true. I felt the sanctions. Your bank cards do not work. Taxi apps will not work. You will not see stores of the big, well-known chains. It is a gray zone in some ways.”
The consensus in the panel of Crimean experts was that the degree of enthusiasm about joining Russia had declined significantly during these seven years on the peninsula, where there was initially widespread support among the predominantly Russian population. Many had hoped for the “return of a mythologized past,” said Joshua Yaffa, a New Yorker correspondent who wrote extensively on Crimea. He referred to a kind of intended USSR 2.0 that never originated.
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“They came down from the clouds to the earth,” said Anton Alekseev of the Crimean inhabitants. He added that he was struck by the level of patriotism in the city of Sevastopol, home to the Russian naval base when he visited it in 2014. He said there was 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 real estate were taken from them because the Russian army claimed it. There are a lot of these stories.” And Alekseev noted that no one can fight the demands on the Crimea. This is all in the name of national security.
According to NATO, Russia has intensified its military presence on the peninsula since its annexation. If it dampened the view of Moscow’s locals, Moscow could also be less gung-ho about the Crimea, of which the Russian taxpayer costs multiple and much-needed infrastructure projects.
In the years immediately following the annexation, there was a great patriotic boost throughout the country. Putin’s onslaught has risen and people are calling it ‘the Crimean effect’. Crimea has long been not only strategic but also romantically or emotionally important in the minds of Russians who have historically vacationed in the micro-climate resorts.
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But other real-life issues, from economic problems to a pandemic to the poisoning of a sensational opposition figure, many say, have trumped the glory of getting Crimea back. Critics say Putin needs another victory. Or at least to claim one. Perhaps that’s why he challenged Biden at the end of the day to some sort of duel – a live broadcast debate, just the two of them – to continue, he said, “the discussion.”