Editor’s Note: On Jan. 28, Atlantic Council Eurasia Center Deputy Director Melinda Haring briefed the US Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe on the human rights situation in Crimea. This is a summary of her testimony.
The human rights situation in Russian-occupied Crimea is acute and merits a hearing as a stand-alone issue. But what happens in Crimea has significance that goes beyond the plight of the two million people who live there. In Crimea, Moscow is learning how to apply a range of oppressive and coercive tactics to minorities it perceives as hostile or of questionable loyalty. These insights could be applied elsewhere in Russia, which is home to considerable non-Russian minority populations. How the US government reacts to the ongoing abuses in Crimea will undoubtedly factor into Moscow’s calculus on comparable situations in the future.
