Power struggles are nothing new in Crimea. The peninsula was invaded in the 18th century by Catherine the Great's forces and landed in independent Ukrainian control with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The multiethnic people on the shores along the Black Sea have been witness to summering tsars and premiers, a key World War II summit, and bloody battlegrounds of empires. Here, a look inside the complicated region.
At left, a lithograph by French illustrator Auguste Raffet showing a Muslim Tatar family riding in the Crimea, from Voyage to Southern Russia, via Hungary, Walachia and Moldavia, by Prince Anatolii Demidov, published in 1848. The book is an account of a French scientific expedition in 1837 to record the geology, history, archaeology, flora and fauna, as well as the customs and habits of the people of the area.
Circa 1855: Officers of the 89th Regiment, Princess Victoria's Royal Irish Fusiliers, at Cathcart's Hill, during the Crimean War. This was the observation point where allied commanders gathered to follow the progress of the siege of Sebastopol.
Tsar Nicholas II in Livadiya, home to the summer palace of the Russian royals.
The small Livadiya palace.
In Yalta, a neo-Gothic castle on the Black Sea, built around 1900.
Circa 1908: The four children of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovitch and the Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna at Erycleek, an estate in the Crimea belonging to the emperor of Russia. From left, Prince Rostislav Alexandrovitch, Prince Feodor Alexandrovitch, (behind), Prince Vasili Alexandrovitch, and Prince Nikita Alexandrovitch.
Wounded Red Army soldiers recuperating in Gurzuf, in 1922. Found in the collection of the Russian State Film and Photo Archive, Krasnogorsk.
Soviet writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, with Lily Brik, relaxing in Yalta, in 1926.
A Pioneers unit at All-Union Young Pioneer Camp Artek, in Gurzuf in the 1930s. The youth organisation was established by the Communist Party in Russia in 1922. Found in the collection of the State Central Museum of Contemporary History.
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty
Two German army soldiers observe the recently occupied city of Yalta, November 1941.
Heinrich Hoffmann/Mondadori Portfolio, via Getty
The Yalta "Big Three" Conference: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin in February 1945.
Russian soliders crossing the Bug River, March 1944.
Russia in the 1940s: Refugees returning home to Sevastopol.
September 1982: Ukrainians crowd a Yalta beach on the Black Sea.
A 1967 balcony view of Yalta.
A mullah raises his hands as he conducts a prayer during a rally in central Simferopol in this March 28, 1998, photo. Officials estimate there are some 250,000 Tatars living in Crimea, many of them born in exile and previously acquainted with their ancestral homeland only through their parents.
