Facts about Crimea
- Crimea is surrounded almost entirely by the Black Sea. It is connected to Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast in the North by the Isthmus of Perekop.
- The Kerch Strait separates Crimea from Russia.
- In the ancient world the peninsula was known as Tauris.
- Crimea covers an area of 10,000 sq miles/26,000 sq km, about the same size of the state of Massachusetts.
- Crimea is 200 miles/322 km from Sochi, where the 2014 Winter Olympics took place.
- The first time Russia annexed Crimea was under Catherine the Great in 1783.
- In the Crimean War in 1853 Russia fought against an allied group of Britain, France, the Austrian Empire, Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire.
- In 1954 the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
- After the collapse of the Soviet Union Crimea became part of Ukraine as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
- In 2014 the Russian Federation annexed Crimea as part of its territory.
- There are 12 operating merchant seaports in Crimea according to ITF Global.
- The main economic activities in Crimea are agriculture and tourism.
- Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has been operating in Sevastopol since 1783.
- Crimea is the native land of the Crimean Tartars who are primarily Muslim.
- In 1944, during World War II, Stalin deported 200,000 Crimean Tartars to Central Asia and Siberia.
- After the fall of the Soviet Union Crimean Tartars started to return to the region. Today they make up 13% of the Crimean population and continue to grow at a rate of 0.9% annually.
- The overall Crimean population is consistently falling at a rate of 0.4% annually due to lower grow rate in the Russian and Ukrainian populations.
- Simferopol is the capital of Crimea. It was the capital of the Scythian state in the 3rd century.
Category: Facts
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