PREPARATIONS
In Crimea, the regional government is led by a Russian separatist businessman whose party received just 4 percent of the vote in the last provincial election in 2010 but who took power on February 27 after gunmen seized the assembly building.
Two days later, Putin announced that Russia had the right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian citizens.
Preparations for Sunday’s referendum are in full swing. Banners hang in the center of Crimea’s capital, reading: “Spring – Crimea – Russia!” and “Referendum – Crimea with Russia!”
A senior Russian lawmaker on Wednesday strongly suggested that Moscow had sent troops to Crimea to protect against any “armed aggression” by Ukrainian forces during the referendum. Putin and other Russian officials have said armed men who have taken control of facilities in Crimea are local “self-defense” forces.
Crimea has a narrow ethnic Russian majority, and many in the province of 2 million people clearly favor rule from Moscow. Opinion has been whipped up by state-run media that broadcast exaggerated reports of a threat from “fascist thugs” in Kiev.
“Enough with Ukraine, that unnatural creation of the Soviet Union, we have to go back to our motherland,” said Anatoly, 38, from Simferopol, dressed in camouflage uniform and a traditional Cossack fur cap.
But a substantial, if quieter, part of the population still prefers being part of Ukraine. They include many ethnic Russians as well as Ukrainians and members of the peninsula’s indigenous Tatar community, who were brutally repressed under Soviet rule.
“Crimea has been with Ukraine since the 1950s, and I want to know how they will cut it off from what was our mainland,” said Musa, a Tatar. “If the referendum is free and fair, at least a little bit, I will vote against Crimean independence.”