page_title: History of Crimea
section_title: Autonomous Republic within Ukraine (1991–2014)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Crimea / Autonomous Republic within Ukraine (1991–2014)
caption_attribution_description: English: SEVASTOPOL, CRIMEA. President Putin laying wreaths at a monument to the defenders of Sevastopol.Русский: КРЫМ, СЕВАСТОПОЛЬ. Возложение венков к монументу защитникам Севастополя.
context_page_description: The recorded history of the Crimean Peninsula, historically known as Tauris, Taurica, and the Tauric Chersonese, begins around the 5th century BC when several Greek colonies were established along its coast. The southern coast remained Greek in culture for almost two thousand years as part of the Roman Empire, and its successor states, the Byzantine Empire, the Empire of Trebizond, and the independent Principality of Theodoro. In the 13th century, some port cities were controlled by the Venetians and by the Genovese. The Crimean interior was much less stable, enduring a long series of conquests and invasions; by the early medieval period it had been settled by Scythians, Tauri, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Kipchaks and Khazars. In the medieval period, it was acquired partly by Kievan Rus', but fell to the Mongol invasions as part of the Golden Horde. They were followed by the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire, which conquered the coastal areas as well, in the 15th to 18th centuries.
  In 1783, the Ottoman Empire was defeated by Catherine the Great. Crimea was traded to Russia by the Ottoman Empire as part of the Treaty provision.
context_section_description: With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukraine. Independence was supported by a referendum in all regions of Ukrainian SSR, including Crimea. 54% of the Crimean voters supported independence with a 60% turnout (in Sevastopol 57% supported independence). The percentage of the total Crimean electorate that had voted for Ukrainian independence in the referendum was 37%. In 1994, the legal status of Crimea as part of Ukraine was backed up by Russia, who pledged to uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine in a memorandum signed in 1994, also signed by the US and UK.
  This new situation led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine. With the Black Sea Fleet based on the peninsula, worries of armed skirmishes were occasionally raised. In August 1991, Yuriy Meshkov established the Republican Movement of Crimea which was registered on 19 November.
  On 2 September 1991, the National Movement of Crimean Tatars appealed to the V Extraordinary Congress of People's Deputies in Russia demanding the program how to return the deported Tatar population back to Crimea. Based on the resolution of the Verkhovna Rada (the Crimean parliament) on 26 February 1992, the Crimean ASSR was renamed the Republic of Crimea. The Crimean parliament proclaimed self-government on 5 May 1992. (which was yet to be approved by a referendum to be held 2 August 1992) and passed the first Crimean constitution the same day. On 6 May 1992 the same parliament inserted a new sentence into this constitution that declared that Crimea was part of Ukraine.
  On 19 May, Crimea agreed to remain as part of Ukraine and annulled their proclamation of self-government. By 30 June, Crimean Communists forced the Kiev government to expand on the already extensive autonomous status of Crimea. In the same period, Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Ukraine's Leonid Kravchuk agreed to divide the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet between Russia and the newly formed Ukrainian Navy. On 24 October, Meshkov re-registered his movement as the Republican Party of Crimea – Party of the Republican Movement of Crimea. On 11 December 1992, the President of Ukraine called the attempt of "the Russian deputies to charge the Russian parliament with a task to define the status of Sevastopol as an imperial disease". On 17 December 1992, the office of the Ukrainian presidential representative in Crimea was created, which caused wave of protests a month later. Among the protesters that created the unsanctioned rally were the Sevastopol branches of the National Salvation Front, the Russian Popular Assembly, and the All-Crimean Movement of the Voters for the Republic of Crimea. The protest was held in Sevastopol on 10 January at Nakhimov Square.
  On 15 January 1993, Kravchuk and Yeltsin in the meeting in Moscow appointed Eduard Baltin as the commander of the Black Sea Fleet. At the same time the Union of the Ukrainian Naval Officers protested the Russian intervention into the Ukrainian internal affairs. Soon after that there were more anti-Ukrainian protests led by the Meshkov's party, the Voters for the Crimean Republic, Yedinstvo, and the Union of Communists that demanded to turn Sevastopol under the Russian jurisdiction and followed by the interview given by the Sevastopol's Communist, Vasyl Parkhomenko, who said that the city's Communists request to recognize the Russian as the state language and restoration of the Soviet Union. On 19 March 1993, the Crimean deputy and the member of the National Salvation Front, Alexander Kruglov, threatened the members of the Crimean Ukrainian Congress not allow into the building of the Republican Council. A couple of days after that, Russia established an information center in Sevastopol. In April 1993, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence submitted an appeal to Verkhovna Rada to suspend the Yalta Agreement of 1992 that divided the Black Sea Fleet that was followed by the request from the Ukrainian Republican Party to recognize the Fleet either fully Ukrainian or a fleet of a foreign country in Ukraine. Also over 300 Russian legislat
caption: Russian President Vladimir Putin laying wreaths at a monument to the defenders of Sevastopol, April 2000
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