DISINFO: The extreme coup in Kyiv led to the return of Crimea
SUMMARY
In the popular referendum that took place in Crimea on March 16, 2014, the islanders voted by a majority to leave Ukraine… due to the danger of the Crimean takeover by extremist nationalist brigades, Crimea decided to ask Russia to include them back in the Russian state.
The Tatars’ rights acquired during the Russian era cannot even be compared to their position when they were in the Ukrainian reign.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative on the annexation of Crimea claiming that Crimean citizens chose to rejoin Russia through a legal referendum and that Ukrainian politics are dominated by fascist/Nazi groups and ideology.
After the collapse of the USSR, Russia reaffirmed respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and recognised that Crimea was an integral part of Ukraine by pledging to respect the borders of Crimea in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and in the Ukraine-Russia Friendship Treaty of 1997.
Euromaidan demonstrations, which began in Kyiv in November 2013 and ended in February 2014, were not a coup d’état but was the result of the Ukrainian people's frustration with former President Yanukovych who refused to sign the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement.
On 26. February 2014, the Russian Federation deployed members of its armed forces to gain control over parts of the Ukrainian territory without the consent of the Ukrainian Government. The next day a referendum was announced and a vote was held on March 16, 2014, in the Peninsula of Crimea. The territory was then controlled by Russian forces, though neither Ukrainian nor Russian election code was observed.
On 27 March 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in which it stated that the referendum in Crimea was not valid and could not serve as a basis for any change in the status of the peninsula.
On 17 December 2018, the UN General Assembly confirmed its non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea.
A year after the illegal annexation, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted that the plan to annex Crimea was ordered weeks before the so-called referendum.
According to Amnesty International, and echoed by the Council of the EU, the Crimean Tartars are repressed by the occupying Russian authorities, the Majlis had been an assembly of the Tatar minority in Crimea before it was banned by Russian authorities. Its leaders, who were Ukrainian MPs, left for Ukraine after the annexation of Crimea, and local authorities have declared two Crimean Tatar leaders personae non-grata and prohibited them from entering Crimea.