By this stage of the story Crimea has been annexed to NSF's Russia.
The Death of Russia - TL
- Thread starter Sorairo
- Start date
But it doesn't make sense. At that time, Crimea had already been recognized as part of Ukraine after 1991. Without a large-scale war, Crimea could not be annexed voluntarily. Even the division of the Black Sea Fleet in favor of Russia was perceived negatively by the Ukrainian military. Until 2004, the Ukrainian military did not hesitate to threaten to shoot if they saw threatening movements (the incident on Tuzla Island in 2002 is indicative in this respect). There is no logical reason why Crimea could be annexed to Russia without the return of Ukrainian territories to the Bolsheviks annexed to Russia in the early twentieth century. At the same time, the brewing civil war literally makes it impossible for the Crimean residents to join an unstable country.
1994 Crimean referendum - Wikipedia
There was a brewing conflict over Crimea that was backed down on by Yeltsin IOTL which the NSF was guaranteed to push on TTL (they demanded as such OTL) - Ukraine was blindsided TTL because it was in the middle of negotiations and thus why the fighting was moot. Salvation Front Russia is not much more unstable than 1994's Ukraine, it's only major issue is a legitimacy crisis with Kaliningrad and the tense Baltic border after their other annexations.
I don't really get what you're complaining about here? The story provides explanation and reasons for why things happen as they do.
The Russians annex Crimea in a sneak attack. Ukraine like the rest of the former Warsaw Pact is in a really bad shape, meaning they don't have a snowballs chance in hell to fight the Russians off, especially since they lack viable nuclear weapons. Furthermore, there is no reason why the Russians couldn't just take Crimea without having to invade the rest of Ukraine.
Crimea may have been acknowledged as part of Ukraine, but nobody would start a war over it. Again, Russia has nukes.
Overall, within this story Crimea's annexation has been given plenty justification (as in, why it happens) so I really don't see why you'd have an issue with it.
Ukraine is in a bad state, but there will be no unexpected annexation.
At this point, Ukraine has one of the largest armies in Europe and the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. There is still a year before the signing of the Budapest Memorandum.
At the same time, the Russians literally have no desire to invade Crimea. You are too much attributing the decline of the 2000s to the nineties (especially in terms of the armed forces). Russians began to consider Crimea as their own only after the annexation in 2014. Before that, it was not even a matter of dispute. And unexpected annexations will not work, because in the event of such actions, the Russians will receive an armed response.
The problem is that you treat the armed forces as if they suddenly degraded along with the economy. But the detail is that until 1993 Ukraine had not yet degraded to such a dangerous level. You need to be a completely stupid suicidal person in order to attack the territory of a country that has all the tools for a successful confrontation.
To give an example of how well the Ukrainian military responded, for example, the initiative of the then President of Crimea to secede was crushed in the bud by the Ukrainian military without firing a single shot.
You can talk about economic problems as much as you like, but the government of Ukraine was monolithic and committed to the democratic path that it followed, even if this commitment caused many problems in the future (for example, Leonid Kravchuk did not challenge his power, he simply left ahead of schedule when his ratings fell) .
And at that time, people still had enough faith in the army. And the army had the opportunity to confirm this with deeds (for example, it was the Ukrainian peacekeepers who created the conditions for the evacuation of civilians from Zepa by distributing the personnel of the peacekeeping force to each bus, thereby preventing the scenario that was used in Srebrenica from repeating).
Transferring the problems of the Ukrainian army from the 2000s to the Ukrainian army before nuclear disarmament is incorrect and unfair.
You just described the casus of white for the war and not the reason for the retreat of Ukraine. Ukraine was in the middle of negotiations, but there was literally no reason for Ukraine to succumb to more pressure. It doesn't sound plausible.1994 Crimean referendum - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
There was a brewing conflict over Crimea that was backed down on by Yeltsin IOTL which the NSF was guaranteed to push on TTL (they demanded as such OTL) - Ukraine was blindsided TTL because it was in the middle of negotiations and thus why the fighting was moot. Salvation Front Russia is not much more unstable than 1994's Ukraine, it's only major issue is a legitimacy crisis with Kaliningrad and the tense Baltic border after their other annexations.
Just because you don't want to accept the way that the story was told doesn't mean that you should demand it be changed and heckle the author, who was more than reasonable in explaining what happened even though he did it for all to read in an entire chapter already. Aside from that, Crimea is Ukrainian again and likely will be for the rest of this timelines future by the end of the story so you are essentially complaining about a situation that is resolved anyways.
If you haven’t noticed, this is an alternate history. An imaginary scenario. Something that didn’t happen.
In this scenario Russia invades and annexed Crimea in March 1994. This map depicts such imaginary scenario.
And clearly the size of one's military determines its effectiveness. So a military more than nine times greater than another should definitively beat their smaller competitor. Oh, wait!
The size of a military means precious little, if it's ill equipped, ill prepared, has poor morale and generally isn't expecting a fight.
That very point gets acknowledged in the story. The Ukrainean nukes are designed to hit targets extremely far away, meaning that only the Eastern most parts of Russia would be viable targets. And that's ignoring just how poorly maintained that arsenal is.
OTL, yes. But this is an alternate timeline. Here, the NSF regime has plenty of reasons to annex Crimea, not least of which is to maintain internal support.
Feel free to call this TL unrealistic, but Sorairo has made every effort to keep it internally consistent and to provide reasons for why events are occuring. Which is all that can be asked of him.
So to just move on already:
- What's up with European Russia by 2023? Is the UN still patrolling the country and there still a bandit/dead ender problem?
- The remains of Nicholas II and everyone else killed alongside him were apparently first discovered in 1978 but are they ever positively identified ITTL or are their corpses just lost to time?
- Are the former Uralic and Komi homelands still irradiated by 2023 or is it more due to the mass death of the Zass Plan and the Federation's strict no ethnonationalism rule that keeps a resettlement effort from happening?
Yekaterinburg is IIRC within Lebed’s Siberia, so it is likely they end up identified, hopefully.
I’m confused about why Italy and Greece left the Eurozone. I thought that the war in Russia should’ve strengthened pro-EU sentimentality due to the need for European nations to stick together and to avoid conflicts, especially after what happened in Russia.
And all this was with the Ukrainian armed forces in 1993. The armament was sufficient. Morale was at an acceptable level. Even the training was adequate. About the fact that they do not expect an attack, then Russia has just overthrown the government with which there were any agreements, and the main power was taken by the communists and fascists. In these terms, the words "did not expect an attack" are literally a lie. I don't see a problem with doing an alternate history, but the reasons for this alternate history are too illogical.
The dumbest thing is that no one who criticizes me has literally given the most obvious reason why Ukraine would allow Russia to seize Crimea in 1993.
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Really? I'm supposed to believe that a former Soviet state has a decent millitary only a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Have you even read the chapter? It is made abundandly clear that the NSF was pretending to be willing to accept Crimea as part of Ukraine, only to suddenly turn around and stab everyone in the back. The fact that they lied so blatantly is explicitely named as part of the reason why the West is so absolutely furious with them.
So no, I'm not lying, I'm telling what happened in the story.
Nukes. That's why. Russia has them, Ukraine has no useful ones, being only able to hit the regions around the Pacific.
Edit: Here are the relevant quotes from the story.
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Essentially, Ukraine had neither the means nor the time and resources to wage war against Russia over the Crimea. Much less against a Russia as obviously crazy as the one led by the NSF. Especially when we consider that this Ukraine would have had to fight alone, because there was no way the 1990s West would have gone about emptying its own arsenals to give them everything they need and more.
I would also add that it appears the Ukrainian high command was run by economics fetishistic Americans who simply assumed the NSF was equally obsessed with economics and therefore would not launch an invasion "because economics."
I would also add that it appears the Ukrainian high command was run by economics fetishistic Americans who simply assumed the NSF was equally obsessed with economics and therefore would not launch an invasion "because economics."
Yeah, sure they think this. The ones that still are alive, at least.
Imagine if Brexit happened during the Eurozone crisis. It causes a near death experience for the bloc which forces reform by taking the Med economies out of the Eurozone.