Crimean platform: casus belli or the moment of truth?

An international conference named "International Crimean Platform" was held in Kiev on August 23, 2021. This is the format of a meeting of representatives of a number of states who have gathered to consolidate forces directed against Russia, coordinate means of military and political pressure and create informational reasons for strengthening the anti-Russian sanctions regime.

The participants officially called their event the inaugural summit, showing that they are opening a new page in the history of united pressure on Russia. They stated that they had established a new political institution that would not only operate on a permanent basis, but would also give rise to new formats operating in a self-supporting and complementary mode. Those who hoped that the conflict between Russia and the West on the issue of Crimea would gradually resolve, if we did not create new incidents, were put to shame.

The Crimean Platform was held in the form of an international format summit, as the initiators themselves said, "for the peaceful termination of the temporary occupation of Crimea and for the restoration of Ukraine's control over this territory."

The head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Dmitry Kuleba, who was a moderator at the forum, stated the main areas of discussion: the non-recognition of the attempted annexation of Crimea; the militarisation of the Azov-Black Sea region; ways to reintegrate Crimea through human rights and sustainable development; the restoration of the rights of the Crimean Tatar people. The summit was opened by the Ukrainian singer of Crimean Tatar origin Jamala with the song "1944".

In short, the summit was conceived by the organisers as a big political show, a PR event designed to show that Russia is in increasing loneliness, and those who have not yet decided who they should be with should understand as soon as possible that they should be together with the West. And whoever was late, lost.

For this purpose, the summit was announced as an open event, which everyone can join, even if their representatives do not come to Kiev.

Russia took what was happening with all seriousness, not allowing light-weight approaches and assessments. Western media widely reported that the list of invited countries was kept secret until the very end for fear of falling under Russian pressure. It was reported that the Russian ambassadors held serious conversations in all the countries involved in the event with those concerned about the need to seriously weigh for themselves all the consequences of a rash step.

As a result, those who are direct vassals of the United States and are part of the system of their military-political and trade unions came. Representatives of Asian, African and Latin American countries did not come. But who came?

Before the summit, the Western media widely advertised the number of future participants, naming those who are guaranteed to come. It was discussed – in various articles – about a figure from 44 to 46 countries, the same figure was repeated by some of our media. The final declaration of the Crimean Platform was signed by 43 countries, and then, at the last moment, Iceland joined all the countries that received an offer that it could not refuse.

The declaration was signed by representatives of the following states: Ukraine, the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, all EU member states (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden), Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Moldova, Georgia, Turkey, New Zealand and Australia.

It is difficult to imagine that among those who came there were those who dared to refuse to sign the declaration. This means that there were as many participants as there were 43 signatories to the declaration. This is the entire sphere of influence of the United States and Great Britain, a political bloc that – with varying degrees of correctness - can be called anti-Russian, forced or voluntary.

The status of the participants was announced as quite high. It was announced that heads of state and government or at least defence ministers would come. However, at the last moment everything turned out to be wrong. The United States, Germany, Great Britain and France have greatly lowered the status of their participants – non-core energy ministers arrived instead of heads of government, foreign ministries or at least defence ministers.

The United States explained this by the fact that it was their minister who most criticised the “Nord Stream 2” project. And Germany and France did not send their foreign ministers because, allegedly, they were very busy with Afghanistan. Apparently, the Minister of Economy and Energy turned out to be the freest in Germany. From Britain, a certain girl came to the post of Minister for Europe and the Americas (that's right, in the plural).

It turned out that the more significant the country, the lower the rank of its representative at the "Crimean platform". And the smaller the country, the higher the rank of its representative. The heads of state represented 14 countries, such as Poland, Moldova, Finland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and others. Polish President Alexander Duda greeted Zelensky in Ukrainian. The head of Latvia Egils Levits congratulated the Ukrainian president on the 30th anniversary of independence and the National flag Day. But the President of Hungary, instead of Russia, criticised Ukraine for the oppression of Transcarpathian Hungarians.

Turkey indicated its participation by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who announced the strengthening of relations with Ukraine. Erdogan supported Zelensky by phone, saying that he was "convinced that the Crimean Platform will become an effective tool for the liberation of the illegally occupied Crimea”. That is, the representation of Turkey corresponded to its place in the world table of ranks – in the middle between Western and Eastern Europe. The head of the Foreign Ministry is just the middle between the president and the Minister of Energy.

The ambassador from Japan participated in the summit. The level of other participants is not reported almost anywhere.

This gave rise to many commentators to speak caustically about the real hopes of the initiators of the summit about the purpose of their meeting – the return of Crimea to Ukraine, and in fact - to NATO, given the non-subjectivity of Ukraine. This attitude of the initiators to their event requires an accurate assessment. If those who did not come did it really out of fear of spoiling their important relations with Russia, then the motives of the largest countries were different.

They simply did not want to be disgraced by the fact that their key politicians participated in an event where their weakness was revealed. With their subtle instinct, they cannot afford such image damage in the style of anti-advertising, since this is a shame for the state. Those who wanted to curry favour with the masters turned inside out, like the presidents of Latvia and Poland, moreover, the Latvian spoke to Zelensky in English, and the Pole even spoke in the Ukrainian language he despised.

In Russia, the Crimean platform was commented on harshly. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called it "a coven of anti-Russian forces, where the West will continue to nurture the neo-Nazi racist sentiments of the modern Ukrainian authorities”. The head of Crimea, V. Aksenov, said that holding the event makes no sense, because there is no chance of returning Crimea, and Zelensky simply demonstrates determination for an internal audience.

The political screen of a large PR event required a demonstration of the position, and therefore Russia also applied for participation in the summit, but it was ignored. The reason is simple: Russia intended to discuss Crimea on its agenda. The organisers were not satisfied with this. Zelensky invited the representative of Moscow to join the discussion of the issue of the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine – only this way and in no other way.

The declaration adopted at the end of the summit stated that "the participants call on the Russian Federation to join the constructive participation in the activities of the International Crimean Platform aimed at ending the temporary occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol”. They called on Russia to join the "Crimean Platform" and share its goals. They also confirmed their intentions "to use political, diplomatic and restrictive methods to put pressure on Russia to restore Ukraine's control over the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol”.

That, in fact, is all that happened at the end of the forum, which was planned, according to Zelensky, as "creating a source of constant headache for Russia," because the Crimean Platform should become the centre for developing and making key international decisions on Crime”. "We are starting the countdown to the liberation of our land from today. The purpose of the forum is to force Russia to sit down at the negotiating table and give up Crimea," Zelensky said.

It is clear that real Western politicians cannot afford to subscribe to such words, since they cannot associate themselves with failure and utopias. This explains the difference in the level of representation of Western countries and their puppet "allies".

However, in the United States, nothing is done for nothing. It was announced that after the summit, the Crimean Platform will continue working at four levels: heads of state, foreign ministers, representatives of parliaments and expert circles from the countries involved. That is, everything will be done to prevent the created impulse from stalling.

The question is natural: if everything is so obviously hopeless, then why spend so much effort and money on this event? Is it really only out of a desire to tickle the nerves of the Russian leadership and once again convince themselves of the strength of the ranks? What hidden intentions moved the participants of the event?

If the motivation of the vassals and puppets does not require explanations, then the interest of the West was best expressed by the former commander of the US ground forces in Europe, retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges. He initiated a project of permanent naval patrols of the main international routes in the Black Sea by the forces of the Black Sea Navies of Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia, as well as the United States, Great Britain, and other NATO countries on a rotational basis.

Russia's Crimea has become an unsinkable aircraft carrier, blocking NATO forces in Odessa, Georgia, Bulgaria and Romania, as well as projecting force through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits into the Mediterranean Sea to Africa and the Middle East. The Russian success in Syria and the defeat of the United States there is a direct consequence of the transition of Crimea to Russian jurisdiction. After the loss of Crimea, everything in the world went wrong for the United States.

From the US point of view, the return of Crimea to Russia has disrupted the fruits of victory in the Cold War, making the process of restoring the Russian zone of influence in the former USSR and Europe potentially possible. Without Crimea, this was impossible, but with Crimea, the process has actually already begun. It's like winning a marathon and losing in the last metres. The United States is simply physically unable to allow and accept such a thing, but they can do nothing.

As a result, there are such PR projects aimed at long-term work on the consolidation of anti-Russian forces, as the "Crimean Platform". However, these forces are only outwardly submissive, but in reality they are unreliable, have their own interests and are capable of betraying the interests of the United States with completely pro-American rhetoric. This gives Russia the opportunity to shake the American line of consolidation and subordination, which has already been demonstrated in the case of “Nord Stream 2” and “Turkish Stream”.

The US defeat in the Middle East led to a defeat in Afghanistan. Crimea is an unextracted thorn in the body of the West, gradually leading to gangrene. The West is hot and feverish, it cannot return Crimea and prevent the restoration of Greater Russia by military means. After all, Crimea has launched the processes of active integration with Belarus. If this also succeeds, things will become very bad for the West.

As a result, Russia's internal policy has changed, hopes for the fifth column have evaporated. There has been a constitutional reform that takes Russia out from under the external control loop. The Crimean Platform is a belated reaction to the collapse of the unipolar world. That is why there is so much PR and so little real politics in it.

Russia actively commented on the behaviour of Turkey, calling it ungrateful. Indeed, Russia saved Erdogan and is even now helping to extinguish forest fires, sending the necessary planes. Our pilots, well-known professionals of deck aviation, the elite of the elite, even died in a plane crash there. Some experts even hotly suggested starting to support the Kurds in retaliation for Turkey.

Such a proposal is reckless, no matter how offensive Erdogan's behaviour may be. But it is worth remembering that the Turks have long explained this behaviour by their dependence on the West. Their position is known from the very beginning, and they do nothing but rhetoric and small dirty tricks in the form of selling drones to Ukraine. They do not support Islamic separatism in Russia, as they once supported Dudayev and Maskhadov.

One should not take Erdogan's duty remarks to Zelensky to heart – he just cultivates him for money. The Turkish Foreign Minister in Kiev did not criticise Russia and spoke in favour of a peaceful solution to Crimea and Donbass. This is a sign for Russia.

The main thing for us is that the global military-strategic balance does not change as a result of Turkey's actions. So far, Turkey's actions are predictable and not dangerous. Support for the Kurdish separatists will not give effect, and complex dialogue will collapse. The winnings will go to the United States, and therefore it is not worth doing what they are pushing us to do.

Thus, the "Crimean Platform" did not become a casus belli, but it became a moment of truth. Our influence extends to those countries that did not come to the summit after conversations with our ambassadors. The US sphere of influence is localised. The world is de facto multipolar.

We have a serious resource of influence, and it should be used more decisively in the CIS. The price of American support is very well shown by the example of Afghanistan and the rank of American participants of the "Crimean Platform". This summit was worth holding just for the sake of this.