New Delhi: Some places come with a fixed, immutable stereotype. For Indian students brought up reciting Tennyson's "Half a league, half a league..." under serious-looking English teachers, the Charge of the Light Brigade would be about the only introduction to Crimea, the region so much in the news today. The ill-fated brigade was among the many outsiders which made Crimea famous as a contest ground for great powers.
Geography plays a major part, as elsewhere. Crimea, if you look in the map, is a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea, connected to what is now Ukraine through a narrow isthmus, and is key to holding the Black Sea. Situated as it is at the meeting point between Europe, Russia and Turkey, and commanding the only warm water sea the Russians can hope for, Crimea has always hosted other peoples'ambitions.
For the longest time, Crimea and the Black Sea was a Greek, Roman and Byzantine colony, till the Golden Horde Mongols, inheritors of Genghis Khan's empire set up camp. The word 'Crimea' comes from 'Krem', Mongol for 'fortress', and conflict has been its destiny ever since. After the Mongols, a Ghenghis descendant, a Tartar tribesman, started his own franchise, bringing the place under the Crimean Khanate, and although the Ottoman Turks eventually exerted political dominance over them, the Tartars managed to get by.
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