Screenshot from RT News

With its multinational society and a long history of conquests, the Crimean Peninsula has always been a crossroads of cultures – and a hotbed of conflicts. Amid Ukrainian turmoil, every ethnic group of Crimeans has its own vision of the region’s future.

Now known as Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the picturesque peninsula shooting out into Black Sea from mainland Ukraine was for centuries colonized and conquered by historic empires and nomadic tribes. Greeks, Scythians, Byzantians and the Genoese have all left traces of their presence in Crimean archeological sites and placenames.

The Russian Empire annexed the territory of Crimea in the last quarter of the 18th century, after a number of bloody wars with the Ottoman Empire.

As part of the 1774 Kuchuk-Kainarji peace treaty the Crimean Khanate, previously subordinate to Ottomans and notorious for its brutal and perpetual slave raids into East Slavic lands, aligned itself with Russia. Soon Empress Catherine the Great abolished the Crimean Khanate, giving them a historic Greek name of Taurida.

Soviet citizens got to know Crimea as an “all-Union health resort,” with many of those born in the Soviet Union sharing nostalgic memories of children’s holiday camps and seaside.

The majority of those living in Crimea today are ethnic Russians – almost 1,200,000 or around 58.3 percent of the population, according to the last national census conducted back in 2001. Some 24 percent are Ukrainians (around 500,000) and 12 percent are Crimean Tatars. However, in the Crimea’s largest city of Sevastopol, which is considered a separate region of Crimea, there are very few Crimean Tatars and around 22 percent of Ukrainians, with over 70 percent of the population being Russians.

An absolute majority of the Crimean population (97 percent) use Russian as their main language, according to a Kiev International Institute of Sociology poll. One of the first decisions of the interim Kiev government directly hit Crimea, as it revoked a law that allowed Russian and other minority languages to be recognized as official in multicultural regions.

Read the full article at RT News

Anonymous Ukraine Releases Klitschko E-mails Showing Treason

Vitaly Klischko (Photo by EPA)

Anonymous Ukraine has released the e-mails of one of the leaders of the so-called opposition and will continue to expose the moves by the west to subvert the sovereign country of Ukraine.

The e-mails released by Anonymous prove that Vitaly Klichko is a puppet of the West and is being financed through intermediaries in Lithuania. The e-mails also prove that Klitchko has bank accounts in Germany and is receiving funding for his coup d’état from the West. We will continue fighting these puppets. The western puppet opposition leaders will hurl Ukraine into chaos. We appeal to the president of our country. The people of Ukraine urge you. President Yanukovich, to restore order and bring calm and stability and disperse the gangs of robbers and Nazis.

We are Anonymous Ukraine.

Expect Us.

Source: The Voice of Russia

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