Everything anticipated as an outcome of the referendum on 16 March for Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation has already become reality… Crimea, almost unanimously, accepted to break away from Ukraine and become part of the Russian Federation.

Why not become part of Turkey?!

According to Turkish media, this can happen by virtue of a document that Catherine the Great signed with the Ottoman Empire in 1783. The Russian empress signed up a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire under which the Crimean Peninsula acceded to Russia. There is a clause under which the peninsula cannot be independent. Otherwise, Crimea should be returned to the Ottoman Empire.

Yes, but both states are already non-existent, part and parcel of history!

Shortly before the referendum, the MP from the German Bundestag Gregor Gysi attacked Angela Merkel saying: „I am dismayed to hear from you that such a referendum runs counter to the Constitution of Ukraine. Please, make yourself clear when it functions, and when it doesn’t. Regarding the resignation of the president it did not function, and regarding the referendum it becomes functional again. Do you support the Constitution as an entity, or only certain parts from it? Mrs. Merkel, the Deputy PM, the defense minister, the minister of agriculture, the minister of environment, the prosecutor general (of Ukraine) are all fascists. The chairman of the Security Council is the founder of the fascist party Freedom. Fascists have taken important posts and dominate the law enforcement structures. Fascists have never let power go voluntarily. They have been able to come to power through some bits of it. And Germany ought to spell that out revisiting its own history…”

And telling you about Crimea, it comes to my mind that the Verkhovna Radareferred to the Declaration for the Independence of Kosovo. This fact in turn, opened my eyes for a curious coincidence related to Albania and Ukraine. During World War 2 two SS-divisions were organized – the 21^stWaffen Mountain Division of Skanderbeg (1st Albanian) and the Galician Division.

The 21^st mountain division was staffed mostly with Albanian Muslims and with German officers. In the summer of 1944 it was assigned with the defense of the chrome mines in Kosovo where it came under strong pressure from guerillas and most of its staff deserted. In November the same year, it acceded to the 7^th SS Prinz Eugen Volunteer Mountain Division.The SS Galician Division was staffed with Ukrainian volunteers during World War 2. One of the units of the Waffen SS of Nazi Germany was later incorporated into the Ukrainian National Army at the Ukrainian National Committee...

Here is another way to look at developments that came hours after the end of the referendum. The two former Bulgarian foreign ministers Solomon Passy and Nadezha Neynsky commented the outcome of the referendum on the TV7 channel: „History suggests that when an act of aggression is not duly answered it escalates. This is a fact of history; this was the case in the past, when the West gave the Sudeten Germans away to Hitler. This was the case when it kept silent about Austria’s Anschluss saying, ‘OK, it’s the last thing he will do’. No, this is not the last thing, it is always one more thing…”, Solomon Passy, former foreign minister in the Simeon Saxe-Cobourg government said and after that mentioned the Anschluss of Eastern Ukraine, of the Southern Kuril Islands and of the North Pole.

Nadezhda Neynsky, the former foreign minister in the cabinet of Ivan Kostov, said in turn: „Talking in real terms, we should say that now Russia is annexing Crimea. This is absolutely unacceptable form an international point of view. As to the South Stream, I have always said that the signature of South Stream by Bulgaria is in fact an act of complicity in the attempt to isolate Ukraine, because South Stream diversifies the route of natural gas, not its source…”

The escalation of the situation in Crimea has its impact on the holiday season. The threat of escalation of the conflict is not good for the tourism industry that accounts for 15 percent of the autonomy’s budget. „The holiday season will be ruined”, Crimea’s Verkhovna Rada MP Leonid Pilunskiy argued. In 2013 Crimea welcomed 5.8 million tourists. Ukrainian holiday makers in the peninsula came to 69 percent, and Russian Federation nationals to 25 percent. In the meantime, summer holiday makers in Crimea have decreased. For objective reasons, Crimea cannot rival Turkey because of the former’s too short summer season. And, developing other types of tourism is both money and time consuming.

By the way, on 16 March a referendum opened in the Italian region of Veneto. Its residents should decide whether to break away from Italy or not, and whether  to set up a new federative sovereign republic.

Voting is about the separation of Venice and its vicinity from the rest of Italy. The goal is to restore to it the status of a sovereign state with millennial history.

The Holy Republic of Venice was an independent commercial republic in the course of hundreds of years until the last head of state (doge) was toppled by Napoleon in 1797. In its heyday it had large colonies in the Mediterranean and further away. It is there that a referendum opened on Sunday scheduled to conclude on 21 March, Friday.

For many years, the residents of Italy’s North have been voicing discontent with the policy of Rome, angered by seeing their incomes being drained to the South, in most cases pointlessly. Voices have been heard that Venetians are eager to break away not only from Italy, but also from the euro, the European Union and NATO.

English version: Daniela Konstantinova