Politics of Ukraine compete fiercely for control over the central government and the position of the president. During 1992 a number of pro-Russian political organizations in Crimea advocated secession of Crimea and annexation to Russia. During USSR times Crimea was ceded from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 by First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev to mark the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav. In July 1992, the Crimean and Ukrainian parliaments determined that Crimea would remain under Ukrainian jurisdiction while retaining significant cultural and economic autonomy, thus creating the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The Crimean peninsula—while under Ukraininan sovereignty, served as site for major
Nikita Khrushchev knowledge, and admitted that he had ordered the flights, calling them "a distasteful necessity". The admission stunned Khrushchev, and turned the U-2 affair from a possible triumph to a disaster for him, and he even appealed to U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson for help. Khrushchev was undecided what to do at the summit even as he boarded his flight to Paris. He finally decided, in consultation with his advisers on the plane and Presidium members in Moscow, to demand an apology from Eisenhower and a promise that there would be no further U-2 flights in Soviet airspace. Neither Eisenhower nor Khrushchev