Perekop isthmus

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Map of the Isthmus of Perekop

The Isthmus of Perekop connects the Crimean peninsula with mainland Ukraine .

geography

At its narrowest point, it is almost nine kilometers wide and separates the black from the Sea of ​​Azov and the Sywasch . To the south of Perekop there are lakes with rich salt deposits , which have always been of economic importance for the region. The North Crimean Canal , which supplied the Crimea with fresh water until 2014, runs across the isthmus . The highway M-17 and the railway line have passed since the annexation of the Crimea interrupted. Only a small border traffic for pedestrians is still possible.

history

Due to its strategically and economically important location, the isthmus was the scene of bloody battles for the Crimea on several occasions. Greeks and Tatars already fortified the area; until the 15th century there was a Genoese colony here .

As part of the Crimean campaigns , Russian troops reached the fortress on the isthmus in 1689. The large number of Ottoman and Crimean Tatar soldiers made an attack hopeless. In the 5th Russian Turkish War in 1737, the main Russian army under the Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Burkhard Christoph von Münnich stormed the defense lines of the Crimean Tatars built on the isthmus . The isthmus has belonged to Russia since 1783 .

In the civil war between the Red and White Armies after the October Revolution , a decisive battle took place in 1920 with the victory of the Red Army over Lieutenant General Wrangel , whereupon around 140,000 people fled across the Black Sea towards Istanbul and the Crimea became an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within Russia.

During World War II , the isthmus played an important role in the capture of Crimea by the German Wehrmacht and the Romanian army allied with it . The peninsula, which was heavily cordoned off by the Red Army, was conquered from September 24 to October 27, 1941 by the 11th Army under General Manstein in a bloody battle on the Isthmus. With the exception of Sevastopol , which was not captured until 1942 after a heavy siege , Simferopol , Feodosia and Kerch were conquered by the Wehrmacht in quick succession . From November 1943, the Red Army began to retake the peninsula; on May 9, 1944, it was completely in Soviet hands again.

In 1954 the isthmus was transferred together with the Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic , which made it part of the independent Ukraine from 1992.

Since 2014, the border between Ukraine and the Russian-annexed Crimea has been running along the southern administrative border of Kherson Oblast . In December 2018, Russia separated the land connections with a solid metal bridle approx. 50 km long and 2.10 m high with a barbed wire crown and safety sensors. Apparently Russia wants to protect itself from Ukrainian terrorists.

Strategic and economic importance

The transport links and supplies to the Crimea ran across the isthmus :

Surname

In Crimean Tatar, Perekop means “Or boynu”, in Turkish “Orkapı”, which means “ditch” ( or ) and “gate” ( qapı ). Perekop means "excavation" in Slavic languages.

Literature and film

A film made by the Ukrainian-Soviet filmmaker Ivan Kawaleridze in 1930 and a civil war novel written in 1952 by the Ukrainian writer and philosopher Oles Honchar are both titled Perekop .

Web links

Commons : Isthmus of Perekop  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Analysis: Russian infrastructure projects in the Crimea - an inventory , bpb , May 23, 2018, Julia Kusznir
  2. ↑ The border is also increasingly being cordoned off on land , SPIEGEL online , December 29, 2018

Coordinates: 46 ° 8 ′ 58 ″  N , 33 ° 40 ′ 20 ″  E