Crimea: The Restoration That Legitimated Putin

The summer of 2026 has once again turned Crimea into the focal point of the war in Ukraine. On 26 June, a state of emergency was declared. Tourists are leaving the peninsula, transport links are increasingly disrupted, and Ukrainian strikes are reaching ever deeper into territory that Russia has regarded as an unquestioned part of the Federation for more than a decade. Militarily, these developments are significant. Politically, however, their consequences may prove even more important.

For Vladimir Putin, however, Crimea is far more than a strategically important peninsula in the Black Sea. It is perhaps the single most important symbol in the historical narrative through which he has sought to legitimize his rule. To understand why developments in Crimea may have consequences far beyond the battlefield, one must first understand the peninsula’s place in the Russian historical imagination.

Crimea as a Civilizational Bridge

In Russian historical thought, Crimea has long held a significance that extends far beyond geopolitics. According to the traditional narrative, around the year 988 Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev briefly captured the ancient Greek colony of Chersonesos in Crimea, then part of the Byzantine Empire. It was there that he was baptized into Christianity, an event that has come to symbolize the moment when the Eastern Slavic world entered the Byzantine Christian civilization. After Vladimir the Great married the Byzantine princess Anna, he returned Chersonesos to Byzantium. The rest of the Crimean Peninsula never became part of Kievan Rus’.

Vladimir (Volodymyr) is baptized in Chersonesos, Crimea.

Moscow later developed the idea of itself as the heir to Byzantium and the “Third Rome.” Constantinople remained beyond Russia’s reach despite several attempts to capture the city, but it was precisely for that reason that Crimea acquired a special symbolic significance. If Constantinople represented the unattainable center, Chersonesos became the place where the Byzantine legacy could be connected to Russian history. The fact that the same ruler is commonly known as Vladimir in Russian but Volodymyr in Ukrainian illustrates how one and the same historical figure has become part of two competing national narratives.

From Catherine the Great to the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Crimea was incorporated into Russia only under the reign of Catherine the Great. Following Russia’s victory over the Ottoman Empire, the peninsula was annexed in 1783 and became part of Novorossiya (”New Russia”), a territory that also encompassed parts of what is now southern Ukraine. In Russian historical memory, Catherine the Great is often portrayed—despite the controversies surrounding her private life and her rule—as one of Russia’s greatest state-builders, the ruler who transformed the empire into a major European power. The conquest of Crimea is regarded as one of the clearest demonstrations of her achievement.

Catherine the Great’s triumphal journey to Crimea.

Following the October Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union, Crimea belonged to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic until 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev transferred the peninsula to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The decision was motivated primarily by practical and administrative considerations, but it also carried symbolic significance, coinciding with the 300th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Agreement of 1654, which Russian historiography long portrayed as marking the reunification of Ukraine with Russia. Within the Soviet Union, the transfer had little political significance, since both republics formed part of the same state. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, however, Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukrainian state.

Putin’s Narrative of Restoration

This development made Crimea a central symbol in Vladimir Putin’s narrative of national restoration. In the historical interpretation he articulated most explicitly in his 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, the peninsula is presented not as territory Russia conquered in 2014, but as land that was rightfully restored to Russia after a historical mistake committed during the Soviet era.

Putin’s historical vision extends beyond Crimea itself. It also draws upon the older Russian concept of sobiraniye russkikh zemel—the “gathering of the Russian lands” after the Mongol domination. Moscow’s rulers portrayed themselves not as conquerors of foreign territories but as reunifiers of a historically fragmented realm, even though Moscow itself had never formed part of the medieval polity of Kyivan Rus’. By contrast, the fact that the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth similarly unified the western territories of the former Kyivan Rus’, including much of present-day Ukraine and Belarus, has received far less attention in Russian historical writing.

In Putin’s historical narrative, the same motif acquires a modern meaning: the historically Russian lands lost through the dissolution of the Soviet Union are to be reunited with the Russkiy mir (”Russian World”). Restoration therefore concerns not merely the Russian state but also the civilization that, according to Putin, emerged from Kyivan Rus’, Orthodox Christianity, and the Byzantine heritage. In his 2005 State of the Nation Address, Putin famously described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” Thereafter, he repeatedly returned to themes of lost influence, economic decline, and the fragmentation of the Russian people, portraying them as both a national tragedy and a historic defeat.

“We are together!”—official Russian celebration of the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the act was therefore presented not as territorial conquest but as historical restoration. It was not merely a matter of recovering a small piece of former Soviet territory. Rather, Putin was portrayed as the leader who had corrected a historical mistake dating back to 1954 and restored a sacred part of Russian history. It was precisely for this reason that his legitimacy as the nation’s restorer was greatly strengthened following the annexation.

Crimea as a Symbol of Legitimacy

For many Russians, the annexation of Crimea was not merely a military success. It was seen as the event that restored Russia’s sense of pride after decades of perceived humiliation and confirmed that the country could once again act as a great power. If Crimea instead develops into a military and economic liability, the same symbol risks taking on the opposite meaning.

Legitimizing political power through narratives of restoration is by no means unique. Yet Putin’s legitimizing narrative differs in one important respect from, for example, the Chinese narrative of the rejuvenation of the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese narrative of national rejuvenation primarily legitimizes the Communist Party as an institution. Putin’s narrative, by contrast, largely legitimizes Putin himself—and it does so on the basis of a restoration that is claimed to have already been accomplished.

The incorporation of Crimea became not only a symbol of Russia’s return but also the clearest proof that Vladimir Putin had fulfilled his historic mission. Crimea therefore became not merely a territory to defend but also a monument to Putin’s historical role. If that monument begins to crumble, the narrative that legitimizes Vladimir Putin as Russia’s restorer may begin to lose its force as well.