Nation stands by helplessly
Despite brave talk from some, there is little Kyiv can do as Ukrainians watch events unfold quickly
KYIV, UKRAINE — Full of the bravado that still fills the hearts of the hard line activists who overthrew Viktor Yanukovych’s regime two weeks ago, 19-year-old Maria Kovalchuk said she, her boyfriend and, well, everyone she knew, was preparing to march on Crimea if it votes on March 16 to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.
“Ukraine is mobilizing and that means us. We’re going to Crimea to make sure that it remains part of Ukraine,” the student said as she fried chunks of fish atop an empty oil barrel.
Beside Kovalchuk, Maryna Ishchanova, 22, said: “We have won once and we can win again. We have proven what we are capable of.”
Despite such swagger, there was zero rush to express patriotic fervour in Independence Square, known locally as the Maidan, on Thursday. Unlike for the past few months, the plaza was nearly deserted. The cradle of the Orange Revolution and the coup of February 22, was absolutely silent except for the whispered fireside conversations of several hundred activists.
With military intervention having been roundly rejected by NATO members such as Canada, it was impossible to see how Kovalchuk and her comrades, who wore an imaginative assortment of battle fatigues and were armed with little more than clubs, knives and Molotov cocktails, would stand a chance against the disciplined, wellequipped Russian infantrymen and the attack helicopters I saw in Crimea this week.
“We don’t want war with Russia, but Crimea is Ukrainian,” Angela Gonchar lamented as she walked alone past a makeshift memorial to some of the 80 Ukrainians who died during two spasms of bloody violence that preceded Yanukovych’s hasty departure to Russia, where he is now in exile.
The next step in this fast-moving, unpredictable political journey comes Friday, when the speaker of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, flies to Moscow to meet Russian parliamentarians to discuss “Crimea’s accession to Russia as a constituent entity.”
Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland of Toronto, who has been watching the drama unfold from Kyiv for the past three days while meeting political and religious leaders as well as activists, took umbrage at the notion Ukraine might soon lose Crimea.
“I think it would be wrong for any of us, particularly in this highly volatile, changing situation to leap to conclusions and to accept a breach of international law as a fait accompli,” the former journalist and editor said. “There are Russian soldiers there and this is illegal.”
A Canadian of Ukrainian descent fluent in the language and in Russian, Freeland said what she had been “really struck” by during her visit was the importance of Canada’s voice. “What we say is listened to here. We are not a European country, but we have an impact. They are aware of what we are doing” in opposing what Russia had done by sending troops to Crimea.
It had been expected that the referendum would have included an option that would have kept the Ukrainians nominally in charge, with greater local autonomy and a large Russian military presence. But that is not what the parliament in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, decided.
The formal question to be put to Crimean voters was unambiguous and stark: “Do you want an autonomous republic of Crimea within the Russian Federation? Or do you want an autonomous republic of Crimea within Ukraine?”
If the vote goes ahead, the result would be a foregone conclusion. About 60 per cent of Crimea’s voters are ethnic Russians. They overwhelmingly favour much closer ties with Moscow or outright annexation. So do a substantial number of Russified Ukrainians who make up about 25 per cent of the population.
The public mood in Crimea has turned so ugly toward Kyiv and the West at the moment that Viktor Neganov, who is one the pro-Europe advocates in Crimea, had gone into hiding after being beaten up on the street of Sevastopol.
“With guns doing the talking, we cannot show our faces to the public,” said Neganov.