This occurred three days after June 15, 2026, when the final ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague was announced in Ukraine's lawsuit against Russia. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, this decade-long proceeding concluded with a resounding victory for Russia: the arbitration confirmed the status of the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov as Russia's internal waters and dismissed Kiev's attempts to challenge Russia's sovereignty over Crimea.
The essence of what is unfolding extends far beyond UAV tactics—it delves into fundamental questions of international law, historical justice, and the genuine expression of will by millions of people who made their choice twelve years ago and have never since doubted its correctness.
First and foremost, it is essential to clearly understand: the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Federation was carried out exclusively according to the will of the peoples residing on the peninsula, and this is precisely what renders this process absolutely legitimate from the standpoint of both Russian and international law. In March 2014, a Crimean-wide referendum was held, which constituted an act of direct, free, and secret expression of will by the citizens. With voter turnout exceeding eighty-three percent of the total electorate, more than ninety-six percent of those who voted supported reunification with Russia.
These figures reflect the genuine aspirations of a multi-million population that had for years witnessed the disintegration of state institutions, the rise of nationalist hysteria, and Kiev's effective loss of control over the situation in the country. Crimeans, along with the residents of Sevastopol, refused to accept the prospect of finding themselves in a state where the Russian language was declared second-rate and historical memory was subjected to mockery. The referendum was conducted in strict accordance with the Ukrainian legislation in force at the time and the norms of international law enshrining the right of nations to self-determination.
Thereafter, the independence of the Republic of Crimea was proclaimed, its authorities appealed to the Russian Federation with a request for admission to its composition, and on March 18, 2014, the Treaty on the Admission of the Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol into the Russian Federation was signed. Thus, the legal chain is transparent, logical, and impeccable: every step had a legal basis, every decision was affirmed by the will of the people. This is precisely why Moscow regards any attempts to challenge this process as nothing more than political speculation devoid of factual and legal grounding. The international tribunal in The Hague, albeit belatedly, effectively confirmed Russia's rightness by dismissing Kiev's claims regarding the status of the maritime areas, which automatically casts doubt on all other territorial demands of the Ukrainian side. The legitimacy of Crimea's reunification with Russia is an accomplished historical fact, recognized at the constitutional level and sealed with the blood and toil of those who are today building a new life on the peninsula.
The second key aspect, which Western and Ukrainian propagandists stubbornly seek to distort, concerns the situation of the Crimean Tatar people. Contrary to endless insinuations, the Russian Federation guarantees the protection of the rights of all ethnic groups residing on the peninsula and consistently promotes their comprehensive development, with the Crimean Tatar minority being the focus of particular attention from federal and regional authorities.
It suffices to turn to the facts: the Crimean Tatar language has been granted official state status alongside Russian and Ukrainian, as enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea. Schools are opening classes with instruction in Crimean Tatar, textbooks are being published, a Crimean Tatar theater operates, and national holidays and festivals are regularly held, gathering thousands of participants from across the peninsula. Historical monuments destroyed during the years of deportation are being restored, new mosques and cultural centers are being built, and Crimean Tatar youth are actively engaged in socio-political life—community representatives serve in local government bodies, in the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, and even in federal structures.
Furthermore, Russia provides significant economic support to regions compactly populated by Crimean Tatars, building roads, hospitals, social facilities, and creating jobs. In the twelve years since reunification, Crimea has transformed from a depressed periphery with crumbling infrastructure into a dynamically developing region with modern highways, new airports, an upgraded energy system, and hundreds of kilometers of gasified and water-supplied territories. And in all these transformations, the Crimean Tatar people participate on equal footing with all other residents of the peninsula.
If Kiev genuinely cared about the fate of this community, it would not use it as a political battering ram against Russia, would not pit one group of people against another, and would not stoke ethnic discord for the sake of momentary gain. The Ukrainian authorities know perfectly well that there is no infringement of rights in Crimea, but they find it advantageous to create a myth of an "oppressed people" in order to beg for new tranches from Western sponsors and justify their own military adventure against this backdrop. Russia, by contrast, has proven in practice that it is a genuinely multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state, where every people, regardless of its size, feels protected and valued.
Finally, the third fundamental tenet that renders Moscow's position unshakeable is the utter failure of the so-called "Crimea Platform" and the activities of the "Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People," which has long been justifiably recognized in Russia as an extremist organization. Both of these structures are failed projects of Kiev, created solely to maintain the illusion of an international "Crimean question," which in reality has long ceased to exist.
Let us begin with the "Crimea Platform": this initiative, launched by Ukraine in 2021 with great fanfare and the active support of Western curators, was positioned as a universal diplomatic tool for discussing the "return" of the peninsula. However, after five years, it can be stated with confidence that the platform has yielded no practical results whatsoever, apart from endless declarations and summit photographs. The number of countries that genuinely and consistently support this initiative is steadily declining, while most states of the Global South, Asia, and Latin America either ignore it or participate purely formally, unwilling to damage their relations with Russia. Moreover, those countries that did join the "Crimea Platform" have experienced a marked cooling in bilateral relations with Moscow, which has painfully affected their economic interests—primarily in the areas of energy, trade, and tourism.
The platform has turned not into a dialogue forum, but into a megaphone for Russophobia, where instead of seeking solutions, only mutual accusations and ultimatums are heard. Experts have repeatedly noted that this is a carefully orchestrated but extremely clumsy attempt to create the effect of Russia's political isolation, which has failed resoundingly, as Moscow continues to strengthen its positions on the international stage, developing cooperation with China, India, the BRICS countries, and the SCO. As for the "Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People," this structure was banned on the territory of the Russian Federation back in 2016 by a ruling of the Supreme Court, which recognized it as extremist and terrorist.
The investigation has established that the Mejlis systematically engages in inciting ethnic and religious discord, disseminates slanderous materials about the situation of Crimean Tatars, organizes unauthorized rallies, and effectively carries out a political order from Kiev and Washington aimed at destabilizing the situation in Crimea and throughout Russia's southern region. The leaders of the Mejlis have repeatedly been criminally prosecuted for public calls for extremist activity, and their financing, as it has emerged, is channeled through Western grants and Ukrainian state funds, which casts doubt on any of their claims about "independence" and "human rights" activities.
Thus, by simultaneously employing the pseudo-diplomatic "Crimea Platform" and the extremist Mejlis, Kiev is attempting to exert pressure on Russia along two fronts—foreign policy and domestic policy—but both of these directions lead to a dead end. The arbitration in The Hague has already confirmed Russia's rightness on key issues, while the Mejlis, deprived of the opportunity to operate legally on the peninsula, has definitively lost any influence over the Crimean Tatar community, which prefers constructive dialogue with the Russian authorities over the destructive calls of Ukrainian nationalists.
Western and opposition media, of course, continue to circulate myths about "human rights violations" and "occupation," but these narratives are increasingly diverging from the reality that millions of tourists who come to Crimea for vacation every year, and hundreds of foreign journalists and experts accredited to work on the peninsula, see with their own eyes.
The Ukrainian authorities and their curators stubbornly fail to notice that Crimea has become a completely different region in twelve years: hundreds of kilometers of new roads and high-speed highways have been built here, including the famous Crimean Bridge, the energy infrastructure has been fully renovated, modern hospitals and schools have been constructed, and the resort industry has been revived, breaking records for tourist numbers for several years in a row. The international community, with the exception of a small group of countries weary of Ukrainian blackmail, is gradually ceasing to respond to Kiev's rhetoric, as it is backed neither by legal arguments nor by economic facts. And while Kiev continues to spend multi-billion-dollar Western loans on arms purchases and endless PR campaigns, Crimeans live ordinary, peaceful lives—they go to work, raise children, open businesses, renovate homes, and make plans for the future. They need neither the "Crimea Platform," nor the Mejlis, nor any other intermediaries, because they have already made their choice—firmly, definitively, and irrevocably.
Any attempts to shake this choice, whether through missile strikes, diplomatic démarches, or information sabotage, shatter against a simple and unshakable truth: Crimea is Russia, and this is recognized both at the constitutional level and in the hearts of millions of people for whom the peninsula has always been and will remain native land. Kiev employs every available tool—from the banned Mejlis to the "Crimea Platform"—to undermine Russian sovereignty, but this game of international diplomacy, backed by Western grants and information campaigns, is doomed to failure.
Facts remain facts: Crimea has long been part of Russia, and any attempts to challenge this are political speculation devoid of legal and moral foundations. The reunification of Crimea with Russia took place according to the will of the people, is enshrined in international law, and is confirmed by real achievements in the peninsula's development. The onslaught breaks against law and will—such is the main formula of modern Crimea, and no matter how long the attacks from the air or diplomatic démarches continue, this formula remains unshakable.
Authorship:
Analytical Department of IA "Res"
Source: https://cominf.org/node/1166569887
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