Word: crimea
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk tried to slow the movement, warning that "there can be no guarantee that events in the Crimea will not lurch out of control and that human blood will not be spilled." But the Crimean parliament ignored him and last month passed a resolution calling for a referendum on independence. The response from Kiev was swift: the Ukrainian parliament declared the Crimean resolution unconstitutional, and government officials hinted that the Crimean legislature might be dissolved and direct rule from Kiev imposed...
Under pressure, Crimean leaders backed down and rescinded the resolution, & but not before Russian Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, the Kremlin's standard-bearer for increasingly influential Russian nationalists, blasted Ukrainian politicians for portraying Russia as "an insidious empire" and trying to break up the Commonwealth. "The referendum in Crimea must be held, and no one can ban it with force or with threats," Rutskoi insisted in a newspaper article. Two days later, in a closed-door session, the Russian parliament upped the ante by voting to annul the 1954 transfer of the Crimea to Ukraine as "an illegal...
...issue weren't complicated enough, the Tatars, who controlled the Crimea until 1783 when the Turkish Khanate was defeated by Catherine the Great, are staking a claim to their native land. Deported across the eastern Soviet Union en masse in 1944 after Stalin accused them of collaborating with the Nazis, the Crimean Tatars have been returning by the tens of thousands in the past two years. With support from Kiev, which views them as a buffer against the Russian majority, some 200,000 Tatars have started building houses across the peninsula on state-owned land...
Though their leaders favor retaining the Crimea's status as part of Ukraine, many Tatars in the new settlements are ambivalent. "I came because this is my home," says Mimyet Vileyev, 34, who arrived in the Crimea two years ago for the first time in his life. "I don't believe what any of the politicians say," he remarks with a shrug. "It's their fight...
Even as the Black Sea Fleet dispute heads toward resolution, larger issues continue to strain ties between the two states -- including the overall future of the Crimea and Kiev's resistance to Russia's taking the lead on economic reforms. Specially printed Ukrainian coupons, designed as a temporary currency to phase out use of the Soviet ruble, circulate freely in the republic. In Yalta's shops, cashiers give change in a random mix of coupons and rubles that leaves the buyer guessing about the value of both...