Putin visits Crimea, drawing fierce criticism from Ukraine, U.S.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Crimea on
March 14 ahead of presidential elections on Sunday, drawing fierce criticism
from the Ukrainian and American governments. In his public comments, he
referred to the illegally organized March 2014 referendum to join Russia as
“real democracy” that “restored historic justice.” Putin visited the Kerch
Strait bridge currently under construction, which will connect the peninsula
with the Russian mainland. Ukraine has filed a complaint for UN arbitrage
claiming the bridge is already violating its maritime rights. He also visited
the Simferopol airport currently being renovated.

President Poroshenko referred to Putin’s Crimea visit
as “an extremely dangerous provocation” in comments to reporters the same day.
He repeated his calls for the EU to impose further sanctions against the
Russian government for organizing the illegal elections this weekend on
Ukrainian territory. Demonstrating its support for Ukraine, the U.S. State
Department repeated its condemnation of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea
and reaffirmed its support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. “In light of
Putin’s remarks, it is important to call attention to the illegitimacy of the
staged ‘referendum,’ but also to the tremendous human costs the Russian
government has imposed on the people of Crimea,” said Heather Nauert, a U.S.
State Department spokeswoman.

Zenon Zawada: It’s
intentionally symbolic that Putin has organized the presidential elections on
March 18, the four-year anniversary of the illegally held referendum in which
Crimeans voted to approve their annexation into the Russian Federation. He has
made the Crimean annexation a central theme in his re-election campaign,
playing on the Russian public’s anti-Western sentiments, as well as national
pride in reclaiming what they argue are historically Russian lands.

So Putin has made it clear to the world that he won’t
withdraw from Crimea, regardless of the sanctions that have been imposed. And
many European players, who are increasingly anxious to restore trade relations
with Russians, are growing more impatient with the EU establishment in keeping
the sanctions imposed. The European public also isn’t much concerned with the
Crimean occupation, being far more preoccupied with domestic problems and
increasingly supporting populist-nationalist parties that are sympathetic to
Putin.

So while we expect the EU to tighten sanctions
against Russia in relation to these elections, we see a bigger trend towards EU
legislatures beginning to relax sanctions against Russia in the next two years.
And we are confident that Putin would rather expand his war against the West
than withdraw from Crimea. In reality, he has no other choice considering that
his entire legacy and credibility with the Russian public largely depends on
his commitment to keeping Crimea under his control. Withdrawing from Crimea
would mean surrendering his presidency.