Crimea votes to join Mother Russia
‘ Beautiful Day’: More than 95 per cent resoundingly opt to break off from troubled Ukraine
SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine
Crimea has voted in favour of seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia. After 50 per cent of Sunday’s ballots were counted, more than 95 per cent of voters had approved splitting off and joining Russia, according to Mikhail Malishev, head of the referendum committee. Final results were not expected until Monday.
The whopping, Soviet- style majority in favour of separation will be doubted in the West but not by anyone in the delirious crowd of perhaps 10,000 people who gathered in Sevastopol’s main square. When the crowd heard the result chants of “hurrah” and “Russ- i- ya” were shouted across Sevastopol Bay.
After thanking Russian President Vladimir Putin for his help, a parade of speakers told the faithful gathered above Sevastopol Bay exactly what they wanted to hear.
“We showed the way to the people of southern and eastern Ukraine,” they each said in slightly different ways. “They asked for our help with the fascists. Tonight marks the beginning of our war against fascism. We saved ourselves from them and our grandfathers would be proud.”
While the Russian side was clearly always going to win the referendum by a large margin, few in the assembly thought there was anything odd about the 95 per cent vote in favour of union with Russia. However, one man in his sixties who had voted for continuing ties with Ukraine rolled his eyes upon hearing the size of the majority.
“Come on,” said. “That’s the kind of thing that they always told ( us) whenever we voted in the Soviet Union.”
The rush to judgment here, with only one week to debate the territory’s future, and the fact that it only took place after Russian troops seized control of the Crimean peninsula on Feb. 28, has caused consternation and fury in western capitals. Sanctions and travel restrictions are expected to be imposed by the United States and other countries from Monday amid fears that Putin’s next target may be eastern Ukraine. Russian troops have been massing since Thursday in several places near the Ukrainian border and seized a gas terminal on Saturday that is 10 kilometres north of the Crimean border.
The official referendum tally, which should be known by early Monday, caps three weeks of astonishing political twists and turns. The roller- coaster journey began with a sudden, bloody, pro- western coup in Kyiv that overthrew Russia’s ally, former president Viktor Yanukovych.
Crimeans who want to live under Putin began celebrating their triumph on Saturday and never really stopped during 12 hours of balloting on Sunday. Patriotic Soviet songs blared from loudspeakers from the second the polls opened at 8 a. m. Cars with Russian tricolours waving from the windows zipped around Sevastopol for hours honking madly. To great cheers from the young and from babushkas alike, the local branch of the pro- Moscow Night Wolves biker gang did a victory lap with their brass knuckle gloves on the handle bars and Russian pennants streaming behind their motorcycles.
“This day should become a national holiday,” said the Wolves’ burly leader, who goes by the name, the Surgeon. “Sevastopol and Crimea are children of Russia. They could never choose the West because Russia is their mother.”
Alexei Terentiev, who joined the Surgeon and a dozen other bikers in Sunday’s macabre street theatre, which was closely followed by a large number of Russian television crews, described the day as “fateful” and said he had dreamed of it every day since the Soviet Union ended 23 years ago.
“None of us cares what the West thinks. Vladimir Putin is the greatest person of our time,” Terentiev said. “Russia is a great nation. It always has been.”
Although about 30 years older than most of the bikers, and dressed much more conservatively, Olga Voloshanovskaya and her husband, Vladimir, thought no differently.
“This is a beautiful day that we have waited for a very long time and we thank Putin for it,” Voloshanovskaya said. “We were part of Ukraine for some years but we always remained a Russian city. Nobody made us vote for this. It is just something that we have wanted. After seeing what the fascists did in Kyiv a few weeks ago, we could not stay with Ukraine.”
Her husband, Vladimir, provided a history lesson that was on the minds of many Crimeans as they voted on Sunday.
“That Crimea became Ukrainian was the mistake of Nikita Khrushchev back in 1954,” he said, referring to the long dead Soviet leader. “He made this gift because of the guilt he felt at how badly Ukraine had been repressed by Moscow. But it was never ratified by CCCP ( Soviet Union) or agreed to by the people here.”
Maria Virlataya, whose family came to Sevastopol from Russia, said she had feelings for Ukraine but they were far outweighed by her cultural attachment to the land of her ancestors.
“If Crimea becomes part of Russia because of what we did today it will only be getting us back to the way we always were,” the 29- year- old travel agent said. “This is a new beginning for us. You can call it the Crimean Spring.”
But Virlataya did not think that Russia should now press its military advantage and seize parts of eastern Ukraine, too. “That would lead to war and war is always bad,” she said. “Nobody wants war with Ukraine. We are brother nations.”
As during the brief referendum campaign it was hard on Sunday to find anyone in Sevastopol foolhardy enough to publicly state they supported continuing ties with Ukraine’s new pro- western government, which came to power in a bloody, unexpected coup three weeks ago. Small wonder. A few people who tried to hold a pro- Ukrainian rally in Sevastopol last week were quickly set upon by brutish, self- styled civilian defenders armed with whips and chains.
Several pro- Ukraine Crimeans in Sevastopol said they had chosen to stay away from the polling stations because the results were a foregone conclusion, making the abuse they might suffer, not worth it. They intended to express their political opinions in another way, by moving from Crimea to the Ukrainian mainland as soon as they could.
Turkic- speaking Crimean Tartars are the only sizable group here who badly want to remain Ukrainian citizens. They much prefer Kyiv to Moscow because they blame Russians for the mistreatment they suffered when they were banished to Central Asia for half a century by Josef Stalin. Many Tatars chose to boycott the election, too, reasoning that because they are only 12 per cent of the peninsula’s two- million inhabitants, their votes would not have made any difference.
In keeping with what has been a very strange campaign, there were no pro- Ukraine or international scrutineers on hand in Sevastopol to observe Sunday’s voting. Nor have any pro- Ukrainian television signals been available in Crimea for several days.
The only television news across the peninsula has been provided by Russian and Crimean Russian stations. Their constant theme, which found a friendly echo in scores of billboards around Sevastopol and the capital, Simferopol, was that Yanukovych’s regime had been illegally overthrown by fascists. Russia’s military intervention had been necessary, they reasoned, to protect ethnic Russians in Crimea from the radicals still camped in Kyiv’s Independence Square.
Why Moscow felt it necessary to engineer such a lopsided campaign and to tolerate such a high level of intimidation was a mystery for two reasons. The lives of Crimean Russians were never at risk. Nor was the overwhelming result in Russia’s favour ever in doubt.