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Opinion By Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
The European Union’s decision to impose sanctions on Russia and on about 20 of its government officials instead of launching a military campaign against that Slavic country for allegedly occupying the Crimea in the troubled Ukraine has averted the possibility of a Third Word War. A recent coup in the Ukraine by a very pro-Western political group is being most strongly condemned by Moscow and some two million-odd ethnic Russians most of whom live in the Crimea, an integral part of the Ukraine.

The Ukraine is a former component of the dismantled Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The country, whose capital city is Kiev, is peopled by Ukrainians who form the majority, ethnic Russians, Ukrainian Tatars, Germans, Poles and Jews plus a sprinkling of other European and Balkan races. Poles, Germans and Jews abound in the Northern region of that country where their respective languages were (at some time) being used in schools in that area.

Yiddish was used as an instruction medium in localities populated by those of Jewish extraction.
The Ukraine will be remembered for its massive electric energy resources which the Nazi army wished to seize during the Second World War. The Soviet Red Army sabotaged them before the Nazi troops moved into the country.

Presently, however, the most important issue facing the Ukrainian regime and its western and other allies is the imminent secession of the Crimea which the people have just supported through a referendum. The Crimea is about 24,160 sq km in area.

The country’s capital city is Simferopol, a well known guerilla training centre for many Zapu cadres during the liberation struggle.
The Crimea itself is a peninsula in the south-western region of the former USSR. It lies between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. It has four geographical regions: the Yaila Mountain and plateau area, in effect a spur or continuation of the Caucasus Mountains; the second is a narrow strip of land lying along the southern coast, a holiday resort area generally referred to during the USSR era as “the Russian Riviera,” the third is the Kerch Peninsula, an area with large oil, coal, limestone, silver and marble deposits.

It is in the Kerch region where the most important Crimea industries are found. There are shipyards, flour mills, foundries and fisheries.
The fourth region is an agricultural area in the peninsula’s northern reaches. It is the largest of the four regions and produces various cereals, especially wheat and potatoes.

Called Chersonesus Taurica long ago, the Crimea is separated from the mainland by the Isthmus of Perekop. It was on this area that the 1853-56 Crimean War was fought between Russia and Turkey and its allies.

The Crimea has a population of about four to five million people, the vast majority of whom are ethnic Russians.
It is precisely this ethnic factor that has similar development to the 1877-1878 armed conflict between Turkey and Russia.

Turkey had been treating Christians in the Balkan states in the most brutal manner imaginable. In 1876, Turkey committed the historically unforgettable massacre of Christians in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Slavs appealed to Russia, the major Slavic power, to come to their rescue, and that war began.

Turkey later sued for peace. That is what is occurring in the Ukraine. The people of eastern Slavic extraction in that land feel abused by those of, by and large, Germanic linguistic and or ethnic origin, and have decided by 97 percent to three percent to become a part of Russia.

Is that decision reversible? That is the question. To the author of this article who, incidentally, was sponsored by the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO) in Moscow to visit all the 15 republics of the USSR in 1975, there is not much of a possibility that the Crimea can rejoin the Ukraine, no more than South Sudan can re-join Khartoum.

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a Bulawayo-based retired journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 or through [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>