PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • Membership
      • All Members
      • Core Members
      • Collegium Members
      • Associate Members
      • About Membership
    • Ukraine Experts
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcasts
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
Contacts

Address
1957 E St NW,
Washington, DC 20052

adminponars@gwu.edu
202.994.5915

NEWSLETTER
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Podcast
PONARS Eurasia
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • Membership
      • All Members
      • Core Members
      • Collegium Members
      • Associate Members
      • About Membership
    • Ukraine Experts
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcasts
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
DIGITAL RESOURCES
digital resources

Bookstore 📚

Knowledge Hub

Course Syllabi

Point & Counterpoint

Policy Perspectives

RECOMMENDED
  • The Determinants of Assistance to Ukrainian and Syrian Refugees | New Voices on Eurasia with Volha Charnysh (Feb. 16)

    View
  • Conflicts in the North Caucasus Since 1991 | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy

    View
  • Will Ukraine Wind Up Making Territorial Concessions to Russia? Foreign Affairs Asks the Experts

    View
  • Pro-Kremlin Propaganda’s Failure in Ukraine | New Voices on Eurasia with Aaron Erlich (Jan. 19)

    View
  • Kyiv-Washington Relations in Times of Colossal War: The Ultimate Test of a Strategic Partnership

    View
RSS PONARS Eurasia Podcast
  • The Putin-Xi Summit: What's New In Their Joint Communique ? February 23, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman speaks with Russian China experts Vita Spivak and Alexander Gabuev about the February meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and what it may tell us about where the Russian-Chinese relationship is headed.
  • Exploring the Russian Courts' Ruling to Liquidate the Memorial Society January 28, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with scholars Kelly Smith and Benjamin Nathans about the history, achievements, and impending shutdown of the Memorial Society, Russia's oldest and most venerable civic organization, and what its imminent liquidation portends for the Russian civil society.
  • Russia's 2021 census and the Kremlin's nationalities policy [Lipman Series 2021] December 9, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with social scientist Andrey Shcherbak about the quality of the data collected in the recent population census and the goals of Vladimir Putin's government's nationalities policy
  • Active citizens of any kind are under threat [Lipman Series 2021] November 5, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Alexander Verkhovsky about the Kremlin's ever expanding toolkit against political and civic activists, journalists, and other dissidents.
  • Russia's Legislative Elections followup [Lipman Series 2021] October 4, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Tanya Lokot and Nikolay Petrov about the results of Russia’s legislative elections and about what comes next.
  • Why Is the Kremlin Nervous? [Lipman Series 2021] September 14, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Ben Noble and Nikolay Petrov about Russia’s September 17-19 legislative elections, repressive measures against electoral challengers, and whether to expect anything other than preordained results.
  • Vaccine Hesitancy in Russia, France, and the United States [Lipman Series 2021] August 31, 2021
    In this week's PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Denis Volkov, Naira Davlashyan, and Peter Slevin about why COVID-19 vaccination rates are still so low across the globe, comparing vaccine hesitant constituencies across Russia, France, and the United States.  
  • Is Russia Becoming More Soviet? [Lipman Series 2021] July 26, 2021
      In a new PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Maxim Trudolyubov about the current tightening of the Russian political sphere, asking whether or not it’s helpful to draw comparisons to the late Soviet period.
  • The Evolution of Russia's Political Regime [Lipman Series 2021] June 21, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Grigory Golosov and Henry Hale about the evolution of Russia's political regime, and what to expect in the lead-up to September's Duma elections.
  • Volodymyr Zelensky: Year Two [Lipman Series 2021] May 24, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Sergiy Kudelia and Georgiy Kasianov about Ukrainian President Zelensky's second year in office, and how he has handled the political turbulence of the past year.
  • Commentary | Комментарии

4 reasons why Crimea is not Abkhazia

  • March 1, 2014
  • Kimberly Marten

Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksander Turchynov, has accused Russian-supported forces in Crimea of “working on scenarios which are fully analogous with Abkhazia.” The notion that the “model” of Abkhazia from the 2008 Russia-Georgia war fits Russia’s moves in Crimea is a theme adopted by many media pundits, as well.

But Abkhazia is not Crimea, and Russian incentives in the two regions do not match. That means that the purported end result from these model predictions — a Russian takeover of Crimean territory — doesn’t have to happen, if Ukraine plays its cards right. Here’s why.

1) Abkhazia suffered a brutal civil war in 1992-3 following the Soviet collapse, and extensive ethnic cleansing campaigns and other atrocities against civilians were carried out by both sides, according to an authoritative Human Rights Watch report. Ethnically Georgian militias were supported by the Georgian state. Ethnically Abkhazian militias were supported both by North Caucasus militants coming over the border from Russia and by the Russian state itself, which provided weapons and training to the fighters and carried out airstrikes against ethnic Georgian targets. According to the International Crisis Group, 8,000 people were killed, 18,000 were wounded, and 240,000 people (predominantly ethnic Georgians) were displaced from their homes. The majority of the displaced remain in separate communities within Georgia proper to this day, and in May 2008 the UN General Assembly called for the right of return for those displaced. Meanwhile, Russian “peacekeepers,” originally authorized by the UN with Georgian acquiescence but showing disturbing signs of offensive activity as the years went by, remained on Abkhazian territory. It is that context — strong irredentist feelings among Georgians (supported by the western and western-leaning international community) coupled with existential security fears on both sides — that set the stage for the 2008 Russian intervention into Abkhazia.

In contrast, Crimea entered the post-Soviet era peacefully. While there was extensive legal wrangling over Crimea’s status within the newly sovereign Ukraine, as scholar Roman Solchanyk described at the time, Crimea managed to avoid civil war. (Crimea had arbitrarily become part of Ukrainian territory in 1954 because of a decision made by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.) While a majority of Crimeans feel ethnic solidarity with Russians, the republic lacks the emotional memories and resentments of Abkhazia’s post-civil-war society. This means that a peaceful, negotiated solution to Crimea’s ultimate status is much more likely than it ever was for Abkhazia.

2) The Abkhazian population is not predominantly Russian by ethnicity. According to the 2011 official census, fewer than 10 percent of the population identified as Russian; even in Soviet times that figure never exceeded 20 percent. In contrast, over 58 percent of Crimeans self-identify as Russian by ethnicity, according to the most recent Ukrainian census of 2001.

This means that Russia has a level of indirect influence in Crimea that it never had in Abkhazia— it already has the sympathies of a large majority of the population, which will probably be reflected in Crimea’s announced May referendum on autonomy. When that is combined with the strong representation of the Russian ethnic group in several other Ukrainian provinces, as well as Ukraine’s dependence on Russian imports for 70 percent of its natural gas, Russia doesn’t need a costly and risky occupation of Crimea in order to have a guaranteed voice in Ukraine’s future.

3) While the 2008 Georgia war was bloody, it was short, largely because the Georgian military collapsed. In part this was because of the small size and limited equipment of Georgian forces, but the problem went deeper than that. A confidential assessment by the Pentagon just after the war, according to the New York Times, cited “mismanagement and unqualified leadership” that kept Georgian forces from being a “modern fighting force.” When combined with the prior presence of Russian peacekeeping forces on the ground, this helped make Abkhazia easy pickings for Moscow.

In contrast Ukraine has a much more formidable army today than Georgia did in 2008, as I argued in a recent ForeignAffairs.com piece. No sensible, rational Russian leader—and we can assume that President Vladimir Putin is both sensible and rational, given his longevity in office and the variety of his recent foreign policy triumphs — would tempt fate by launching an invasion that provoked a Ukrainian military response.

4) Finally, Georgia in 2008 was led by an impetuous, easily-angered president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who had staked his political future on restoring Georgia’s pre-civil-war territorial integrity. Putin is a master of judo, who understands how to make opponents fall by using their own weight against them. He knew that he could egg on Saakashvili into moving first (as determined by the Council of the European Union independent fact-finding report about the 2008 war).

Here is where Ukraine’s interim leadership can ensure that Crimea does not become Abkhazia, and can thereby forestall a frightening larger war over Ukraine’s territorial future. By remaining calm and doing everything it can to prevent the use of violence against Crimea’s ethnic Russian majority, Kiev can wait Moscow out.

In the long run, as Oxana Shevel has argued here in The Monkey Cage, it is not in Moscow’s interest to be saddled with the costs of governing the complex ethnic mix of Crimea, given its significant Tatar population that is hostile to Russian control. If Kiev makes clear that it can accept a renegotiation of Crimea’s autonomous status within a sovereign Ukrainian state — and especially if Kiev maintains the 2010 bargain it reached with Moscow, allowing Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to remain at its Crimean base of Sevastopol until 2042 — hope remains that the current Crimean crisis can be solved without a Russian invasion.

See the original post © The Monkey Cage

Related Topics
  • Marten
  • Russia
  • Ukraine
Previous Article
  • Policy Memos | Аналитика

Единая Россия и остальные: Попытки Кремля выстроить правящее большинство

  • February 28, 2014
  • Regina Smyth
View
Next Article
  • Commentary | Комментарии

How To Prevent the Crisis In Ukraine From Escalating

  • March 1, 2014
  • Scott Radnitz
View
You May Also Like
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Kyiv-Washington Relations in Times of Colossal War: The Ultimate Test of a Strategic Partnership

  • Volodymyr Dubovyk
  • January 11, 2023
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Prevailing Soviet Legacies

  • Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov
  • December 27, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

In Russia’s Nuclear Messaging to West and Ukraine, Putin Plays Both Bad and Good Cop

  • Simon Saradzhyan
  • December 23, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Ukraine’s Asymmetric Responses to the Russian Invasion

  • Nurlan Aliyev
  • July 28, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем
  • Territorial Conflict

Dominating Ukraine’s Sky

  • Volodymyr Dubovyk
  • March 5, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Russian Anti-War Protests and the State’s Response

  • Lauren McCarthy
  • March 4, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Путин и Лукашенко

  • Konstantin Sonin
  • August 29, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Отравление оппозиционеров в России превратилось в регулярную практику

  • Vladimir Gel'man
  • August 22, 2020

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

PONARS Eurasia
  • About
  • Membership
  • Policy Memos
  • Recommended
  • Events
Powered by narva.io

Permissions & Citation Guidelines

Input your search keywords and press Enter.