can someone explain the material reasons for russia annexing crimea?
i’m sorry if this makes some users here feel old lol but i was a preteen and apolitical obviously when this happened so i genuinely know nothing about this situation. does it have anything to do with nato? i’m just curious to get a marxist analysis of this situation
Crimea is host to Russian naval bases and a big Russian population, and the bases were leased from Ukraine after their transfer to the Ukrainian SSR and the dissolution of the USSR. When the NATO government was established in Kiev, Russian forces were already in Crimea and clearly weren't going to hand over Sevastopol to NATO.
Something that should be noted is that the the majority of Crimea's Army and Navy immediately defected to Russia. As an odd note, this also included 100% of the dolphins.