2014 Russian annexation of Crimea
annexation of Crimea into Russia in 2014
In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine, occupied it, and then annexed it after an illegitimate referendum. This took place amid the uncertainty that immediately followed Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity. The invasion marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Crimea's annexation has been described as an instance of modern Russian imperialism. It was the first time since World War II that a European country had annexed part of another, and some analysts see the annexation as the beginning of a Second Cold War between Russia and the West.
The events in Kyiv that ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych on 22 February 2014 sparked both pro- and anti-separatist demonstrations in Crimea. At the same time, Russian president Vladimir Putin told his security chiefs to begin work on "returning Crimea to Russia". On 27 February, Russian special forces without insignia began seizing strategic sites across Crimea. Russia denied involvement at the time, but Putin later admitted that they were Russian troops. As the armed men occupied Crimea's parliament, it dismissed the Crimean government, installed the pro-Russian Aksyonov government, and announced a referendum on Crimea's status.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15920546. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “2014 Russian annexation of Crimea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.