DISINFO: Ukraine received all its lands from Russia
SUMMARY
Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking about the 1991 borders of Ukraine, said that after the collapse of the USSR, the country took with it everything it received from Russia’s master’s shoulder.
RESPONSE
Recurrent negation of Ukrainian statehood and historical revisionism. This claim is part of a disinformation campaign aiming to justify Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Here Putin hints at the “historically Russian status” of the temporarily occupied Crimea, which Ukraine allegedly received as a gift from a drunken first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Khrushchev in 1954. This myth existed for a long time exclusively in the form of an anecdote, but in 2014, during the so-called “Crimean speech” about the occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula, Putin legitimised the old joke.
The mythical autocracy of Nikita Khrushchev did not exist and the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union could not single-handedly transfer Crimea to Ukraine. The decision on this was made collectively - by the entire leadership of the USSR.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Crimea held referendums several times to choose the future of the peninsula. Crimeans took part in the Crimean referendum on January 20, 1991, in which they decided that they wanted to restore the autonomy of Crimea. On December 1, 1991, a referendum was held on the issue of Ukrainian independence - Crimeans voted by a majority for the independence of Ukraine. It is important that Ukraine is the only state that asserted its independence in a referendum. All other countries limited themselves to declarations of independence.
Similar cases can be found in our database such as: Ukrainian statehood is gone after Euromaidan, Ukraine is the West’s anti-Russia puppet project, Ukraine's statehood is a myth, its territory belongs to Russia, Ukraine was created from parts of Russia, Ukraine will cease to exist because no-one needs it, There has never been a historical Ukraine.