Crimean minorities concerned over referendum to break away from Ukraine

Pro-Russia authorities in the Crimea region of Ukraine this week announced a referendum over whether Crimea will break from Ukraine and join Russia. Many people in the region support Russia and are distrustful of the Western-backed interim government in Kiev. But ethnic minorities are fearful about what place they’d have inside a Crimea that’s absorbed into the larger Russian Federation. Jacob Resneck reports.
A tapped phone conversation between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was released last month. The two discuss who they’ll place in Ukraine’s interim government in the run-up to elections. They decide that Ukraine’s rising star boxer-turned-politican Vitali Klitschko should take a back seat to economist Arseniy Yatsenyuk who could share power with smaller, right-wing nationalist parties.
The State Department never disputed that the tape and conversation were real.
Evidence of Western powers acting as kingmakers in Ukraine angered many in southern and eastern part of the country where Russian-speakers are in the majority. They distrust Washington’s meddling and many look to Moscow to protect their interests.
Nowhere is that more evident than Sevastopol, a navy town in the Crimea and host to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
These past few weeks this city and others have been host to pro-Russia rallies with pop stars, choirs and speeches in which the people were warned that fascists and western puppets had seized power in Kiev.
Adding fuel to the fire, one of the first acts of the Western-backed interim government was a draft bill that would remove Russian as an official language in Ukraine.
That crossed a red line for people here like 37-year-old Mikhail Nichik who stands with a group of friends holding a Russian flag high aloft.
“We want to speak the language which represents our nationality. We are Russians and we want to express ourselves in Russian,” he explains. “We think in Russian. And those laws passed recently – prohibiting the Russian language – are unacceptable for a single reason: I understand the Ukrainian language in general, but I am not able to express my thoughts clearly and articulate properly in Ukrainian.”
The strike against the Russian language was seized upon by pro-Russia outlets. These media outlets have portrayed the bloody violence that killed about 80 protesters and ended with the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych as an armed takeover by right-wing extremists.
Many people here say they only trust Russian media and are only hearing one side of the story.
So when Moscow ordered its forces to occupy Crimea last week many people accepted the explanation that they are a stabilization force.
Russia denies that these soldiers are under its command but it’s become somewhat of a joke as many of the vehicles have Russian military license plates and even the soldiers themselves have admitted to journalists they’d arrived from Russia.
This past week about 250 uniformed Cossacks from western Russia arrived in Sevastopol where they were sworn in to begin joint-patrols with local police.
Thousands of people greeted them with chants of “Russia! Russia!” Their commander, Col. Sergei Savonin Yurievich announced to TV reporters that they’d keep the city safe from outside extremists.
So when the region’s newly installed pro-Russia administration announced they’d hold a March 16 referendum on joining Russia, people here weren’t surprised.
Crimea was absorbed into the Russian Empire in the 18th century. It was in 1954 that it was ceded to Ukraine. But since Russia and Ukraine were both part of the Soviet Union, it didn’t matter until 1991 when they became separate states.
So does everyone here support Russia? Not quite. Up the highway about 35 miles is the town of Bakhchisaray – the heartland that’s home to many Crimean Tatars. They’re a Turkic people who ruled this region up until the Russian conquest in 1783.
There’s a lot of history here. Some of it’s not pleasant. Virtually the entire Tatar population was deported to Central Asia by Stalin in 1944. Some had joined nationalist Ukrainians to side with the Germans and it was collective punishment for what he considered a disloyal nation.
Forty-nine-year-old Enver Umerov is a Crimean Tatar who sits on the city council. He returned here with his family in the 1990s from Uzbekistan where he was born. His family’s tragic history is not exceptional for these parts.
“One of my grandfathers was a Communist and was shot by Germans, my second grandfather was anti-communist and spent 25 years in prison, one of my grandmothers died on the road while being deported and another died of tuberculosis six years after being deported to a harsh climate,” he says.
Since the Tatars returned here they’ve now make up about a quarter of the population. People get along with their neighbors.
“Relations have been good for the past 25 years of peaceful existence,” he says. “We’ve learned how to get along. But currently we are worried about recent provocations from outside.”
For this community the presence of Russian troops is occupation. They don’t trust the Kremlin and fear another campaign of Russification.
Ahmet Chiygoz is head of the local Mejlis, that’s the Tatar council for this community. He says there’s fear of staged provocations – acting on the orders of Moscow – that would lead to inter-ethnic fighting.
“The people of different nationalities who live here would never do such a thing it could only come from elsewhere,” Chiygoz said. “We are expecting as according to Putin’s plan, this could be groups of people appearing to be Crimean Tartars attacking ethnic Russian families or the opposite.”
These fears are rooted on historical fact. There are many stories of staged provocations in other breakaway republics following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
These Tartars say they’re not ready to take up arms. That would be responding to the provocation. For now they’re setting up neighborhood watches to keep an eye out after dark.
After the sun sets, about a dozen men stand around in a nervous clump chewing sunflower seeds and chain-smoking. A story has been circulating about a strange car photographing the checkpoints and they’re a little shaken.
“We spend sleepless nights so our children can rest,” says 48-year-old Ernest Bekirov, a soft-spoken man in a brown leather jacket. “We know our efforts are small, but us Tartars have a proverb that: Drop by drop one makes a big lake.”
But with a hastily announced referendum on independence over whether to join Russia about a week away, there are fears that old animosities could erupt into new conflicts.
In the meantime, Ukraine is mobilizing for war as Russia has ignored protests that it’s about to annex the territory of a neighbor.
- Waving the Crimea Autonomous Republic (Ukraine) and Russian national flag doesn’t mean secession, this group of friends from Crimea’s provincial capital Simferopol said Sunday. They want autonomy and respect for their rights as ethnic Russians, not war with Ukraine which they consider a brother nation.
- A Belarus Black Sea Navy veteran has come to support the Cossacks during a public ceremony. As a pro-Russian sympathizer, he is wearing the orange and black colours of Russian military valour with words “Sevastopol 1942 – We Remember” and many other medals awarded to Red Army soldiers for outstanding bravery and resourcefulness leading to a battle victory.
- Many ethnic Russians in Sevastopol they see Russia’s incursions into Crimea as a way to safeguard the region’s autonomy which they view is being threatened by Ukrainian nationalists in the caretaker government.
- The people of Sevastopol came out in the hundreds to support the Cossacks during a public ceremony. Russian nationalism remains high among ethnic Russians who distrust far-right nationalists who had a visible presence at Kiev’s independence movement, EuroMaidan.
- Some 250 uniformed Kuban Cossacks arrived from Russia’s Krasnodar region and were sworn in Sunday by Sevastopol’s newly installed pro-Russia authorities.
- The volunteer militia announced they would conduct joint patrols with local police to protect Crimea’s local population.
- Wielding traditional bullwhips, a detachment of volunteer Kuban Cossack militia stand at attention after arriving Sunday to Sevastopol from Russia’s Black Sea coast. Their commander said they had arrived at the invitation of Crimea’s newly installed pro-Russia authorities.
- Surrounded by reporters from the Russian and local Crimean television and radio stations, the Kuban Cossacks’ leader, Col. Sergei Savonin Yurievich, says his men have come to protect Sevastopol’s population from unspecified threats.
- In a committee hall, two items stand out in the conference room; the light blue Crimean Tatar flag with its golden tamga (stamp, seal) and the portrait of Bekir Çobanzade; one of the Crimean Tatar greatest statesmen, intellectuals and poets.
- In 1944, Crimean Muslims under Stalin’s orders were subjected to mass deportation and some two hundred thousand were transported to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. About half died of disease and malnutrition – no other Soviet nationality suffered to the scale of the Crimean Tatars.
- The political leadership of the ethnic Tartars supported the protester-led “Maidan” movement in Kiev. They say there is no threat and are suspicious of Moscow’s intentions given their difficult history under Tsarist Russian and later the Soviet Union. Ahtem Chiygoz is the leader of Bakhchisaray’s traditional Tartar council.
- The town of Bakhchisaray was once the former capital and the centre of public, cultural and religious life of the Crimean Tatars.
- Deported by Soviet authorities in the 1940’s it was not until the beginning of the Perestroika followed on by Ukrainian independence that Crimean Tatars returned from exile to their homeland. As a way of reclaiming their national, cultural and religious rights many of the mosques are gradually being restored after many decades of neglect.
- The Bakhchisaray palace of the Crimean Khans was the main residence of the state power for hundreds of years. After years of cultural non-existence under the Soviet government, Bakhchisaray is slowly coming to terms with its regained Crimean Tatar history.
- Islam is the biggest minority religion in the Ukraine and of the half a million registered, more than half are Crimean Tatars.
- Unarmed Crimean Tatars have set up many neighbourhood watch groups that observe passing vehicles day and night in order to protect their families. They observe for suspicious groups and vehicles ever since Ukraine’s Crimean region, including the town, was overrun by pro-Russian forces. The forces have no insignias and have surrounded the town’s Ukrainian troop garrisons.