Crimea is voting on whether to leave Ukraine and join Russia, in a referendum held under the shadow of Russian guns and denounced as illegal by Kiev and the West.
Moscow insists the plebiscite is legitimate and is pushing through legislation that could usher Crimea into the Russian Federation, despite threats from the EU and United States to impose sanctions on Russian officials and rising military tension in eastern Europe.
Most of Crimea’s ethnic-Russian majority is expected to support a split from Kiev, while many ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars who together make up about 40 percent of the peninsula’s 2 million are boycotting a referendum whose result they suspect is already decided.
"I'm going to vote, and my friends and family will too," said Marina, a pensioner in the regional capital Simferopol.
“This is a historic day, a celebration. We are going back to Russia where we belong,” she said, as rain beat against her umbrella. Behind her, outside parliament, a group of Russian Cossacks in shaggy fur hats stood guard beneath Russian, Crimean and Cossacks flags. Ukraine’s colours and emblems disappeared weeks ago from officials buildings in Crimea.
Russian forces who took control of Crimea late last month have been welcomed by many ethnic Russians, who feel closer to Moscow than Kiev and believe the Kremlin’s unsubstantiated claims that their lives are threatened by “fascists” aligned with Ukraine’s new pro-western government.
Voting is due to finish at 8pm local time (6pm Irish time) and one authorised exit poll is expected shortly afterwards. Results will be announced tomorrow, but Crimea's Moscow-backed leader Sergei Aksyonov says he expects 80 percent of voters to support union with Russia.
“This is a historic moment, everyone will live happily,” Mr Aksyonov said after casting his ballot, as security guards pushed away a man carrying a Ukrainian flag.
“This is a new era...We will celebrate this evening.”
Mr Aksyonov, a burly former businessman nicknamed “The Goblin” during Crimea’s crime-ridden 1990s, was appointed local premier in a closed session of parliament after it was seized by Russian gunmen. In 2010 elections his party, Russian Unity, took only 4 per cent of votes in Crimea.
He insists, like Moscow, that Crimea is now under the control of local “self-defence” forces rather than Russian troops, but he has not explained how these supposed volunteers acquired the latest Russian weaponry and military vehicles.
Kiev says some 20,000 Russian soldiers are now in Crimea – trapping outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian troops in their bases - and more are massing near Ukraine’s eastern border.
On the eve of the referendum, Ukraine’s military scrambled to confront Russian forces on a spit of land north of Crimea, near a gas pumping station. Officials in Kiev said no fighting took place, and only warning shots have been fired during Russia’s military incursion into Crimea.
In Simferopol, a group of unidentified gunmen stormed into the Hotel Moskva, where many foreign journalists are staying, in response to an unspecified “security alert”. Several journalists, cameramen and photographers have their equipment stolen or smashed in recent days, and some reporters and pro-Ukraine activists have been abducted.
While many Russians in Crimea are celebrating today’s vote and would welcome a return to Moscow rule, the region’s 200,000 or so Tatars are vehemently against it, having been deported en masse to Siberia and central Asia by the Kremlin in 1944.
“We confirm our recognition of Ukraine as a sovereign and independent state within its existing borders, and strongly condemn this act of aggression by the Russian Federation and its plan to annexe Crimea,” the Crimean Tatar assembly in Simferopol said in a statement.
Amid increasing street violence in largely Russian-speaking cities in eastern Ukraine, Moscow has insisted on its right to intervene military to protect people there, stoking fears in Kiev that the Kremlin plans to occupy swathes of its territory. Kiev accuses Moscow of sending groups of saboteurs over the border to foment unrest in Ukraine and provide a pretext for invasion.
The EU and US have threatened to swiftly impose sanctions on Russian officials if they support Crimea’s referendum, which was condemned as invalid yesterday by 13 of the United Nations Security Council’s 15 members. Russia’s vetoed the resolution but China only abstained from voting – a blow to Moscow from a state that often supports it on international issues.
"Russia, isolated, alone and wrong, blocked the resolution's passage," said Samantha Power, Washington's envoy to the UN. "This is a sad and remarkable moment."
Ukraine has no intention of pulling its troops out of Crimea despite a rapid build-up of Russian troops in the region to a level of about 22,000 servicemen, the acting defence minister said in comments published today.
Ihor Tenyukh, interviewed by Interfax news agency as the pro-Russian Crimean leadership held a referendum on union with Russia, said Ukraine in no way considered the peninsula lost and would remain there and take action in accordance with events. Under agreements covering the basing of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Crimea, Russia had set a limit of 12,500 for the number of its servicemen in Crimea for 2014, he said.
“Unfortunately, in a very short period of time, this 12,500 has grown to 22,000,” he said. “This is a crude violation of the bilateral agreements and is proof that Russia has unlawfully brought its troops onto the territory of Crimea.”
