Sailors attend a memorial and funeral service for first rank captain Andrei Paliy, Russia's Black Sea Fleet deputy commander, who was killed in the eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on March 20, in Sevastopol, Crimea on March 23, 2022. (Photo by Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)

British-based Ukrainians gather outside the Russian Embassy in London to protest against the build-up of troops in the Crimea region, on March 2, 2014. The demonstrators chanted and held banners demanding “Hands off Ukraine”. (Photo by John Stillwell/PA Wire)

A soldier under Russian command restrains a colleague after he fired his weapon into the air and screamed orders to turn back at an approaching group of over 100 unarmed Ukrainian troops at the Belbek airbase, which the Russian troops are occcupying, in Crimea on March 4, 2014 in Lubimovka, Ukraine. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) looks through a window of a research bathyscaphe while submerging into the waters of the Black Sea as he takes part in an expedition near Sevastopol, Crimea, August 18, 2015. (Photo by Alexei Nikolsky/Reuters/RIA Novosti/Kremlin)

Participants hold flags during a demonstration lesson that is part of an extracurricular military-patriotic program, which involves weapon training, first aid treatment, camping skills and other courses, in Sevastopol, Crimea on May 19, 2023. (Photo by Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)

Gold bars from the vault of a bank and Swiss one franc coins are seen in this illustration picture taken in Zurich November 20, 2014. The “Save our Swiss gold” proposal, spearheaded by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), aims to ban the central bank from offloading its reserves and oblige it to hold at least 20 percent of its assets in gold. The referendum is scheduled for November 30. The SVP argues it would secure a stable Swiss franc. (Photo by Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)

A pro-Russian activist aims a pistol at supporters of the Kiev government during clashes in the streets of Odessa May 2, 2014. Police said a man was shot dead in clashes between a crowd backing Kiev and pro-Russian activists in the largely Russian-speaking southern port of Odessa, which lies west of Crimea, annexed by Moscow in March. (Photo by Yevgeny Volokin/Reuters)

Abandoned cars are seen around a cross in the village of Tbeti near Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, Georgia, July 4, 2015. President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty with Georgia's rebel South Ossetia region on March 18 that almost completely integrates it with Russia, alarming Georgia and the West a year after Moscow took over Crimea. Russia won a five-day war with Georgia in 2008 over the fate of South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia. It formally recognizes both regions as independent states and signed a similar treaty with Abkhazia last year. (Photo by Kazbek Basaev/Reuters)