The 2014 Crimean Crisis: Collective Self-Determination, Territorial Integrity, and Legitimacy under International Law

Abstract

A growing variety of critical analyses of unlawful offenses and acts of imperialism against ethnic minorities and their territories have been made possible by evolving requirements for democracy. One of these acts is the sequence of events that took place in early 2014: the military invasion, the referendum, and finally, the annexation of Crimea on February 20, 2014—one of the major acts of hostility in Ukrainian-Russian relations. The annexation raised the questions: To what extent was the Russian moved to annex Crimea legal under international law and standards, and Ukrainian law? How can this situation be applied to the democratic merits of self-determination and territorial integrity? The dominant view of the Crimean Crisis is that it was strictly illegal. On the other hand, the Kremlin claims to have met the demands of Crimeans, the majority of whom are Russian speakers and identify as Russians. Previous research has focused purely on identifying the illegality of the annexation and thus has been unable to disentangle the analysis of the principles of self-determination and territorial integrity and successfully apply them to the issue. This paper argues that while the annexation was illegal under international law and respective laws, notably the Ukrainian constitution, it was primarily illegal because the referendum was organized by Russia and not by a local Crimean government or the Ukrainian government. Due to the element of “external self-determination” in the referendum and annexation, as well as notable breaches of democratic referendum standards and laws at large, the annexation remains to be concluded as illegal in this paper and in most available literature. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the right to self-determination and territorial integrity and their intersection, concluding that by considering their overlap in a democratic environment, a feasible alternative can be found.