Episode Summary

You've already heard of the events of February 20, 2014: a large group of unmarked soldiers known as “little green men” entered Crimea and occupied it by force. Although they presented themselves as a neutral militia, they were, in fact, russian armed forces, there to annex the peninsula to the “fatherland." They then oversaw an illegal and unconstitutional referendum with the intent to falsify proof that Crimea was eager to join russia.

But russian forces didn’t just show up in Crimea in 2014. The first “separatist” movement under russian direction occurred as early as 1994, three years after Ukraine proclaimed independence. The groundwork to russify the population started then and there. 2014 wasn’t the first attempt at annexation either. In 2003, russia tested the waters with the conflict at Tuzla Island, largely believed to be the beginning of the end of “peaceful” attempts to leave Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty intact.

Today, Yulia speaks with Pavlo Artemyshyn, Ph.D., lecturer of Ukrainian History at the I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. They walk us through russia's centuries-long history of occupation on the Crimean Peninsula.

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