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.