Rifts in Crimea widen over return to Russian fold

Many of Crimea’s Russians are celebrating the prospect of Kremlin rule, but its Muslim Tatar minority wants to stay with Ukraine and has called for international peacekeepers to be sent to the region.

As Moscow’s military continued to control the Black Sea peninsula, keeping most Ukrainian soldiers and naval ships in the area trapped in their bases, ethnic Russians marched yesterday with flags and chanted “Russia! Russia!” and “Crimea is Russia!”

“It’s great news – Putin has saved us,” said Marina, a pensioner in Sevastopol, who wore a ribbon in Russia’s red, white and blue livery on her coat as she praised Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin. “It can’t come soon enough for me, we should never have left Russia in the first place.”

Ethnic population
Like many of Crimea's 60 per cent ethnic-Russian population, she fears Ukraine's new pro-European Union government and far-right elements among its support, and laments the decision taken in 1954 to transfer Crimea within the Soviet Union from Russia to Ukraine.

Sixty years on, with lightning speed, Moscow and its allies in Crimea are poised to bring the region and its two million people back under Kremlin control.

In just a week, Russian forces and Crimean militia have seized control of the peninsula, a new Russian nationalist premier has been installed, and parliament has voted to join Russia and called a referendum to confirm that decision.

That vote has now been brought forward to March 16th. In Moscow, meanwhile, deputies are rushing through legislation to make it easier for Russian-speakers in the former Soviet Union to obtain Russian passports, and for “parts of foreign states” to join the Russian Federation.

"This so-called referendum has no legal grounds at all," said Ukraine's prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

“I urge the Russian government not to support those who claim separatism in Ukraine. Crimea was, is and will be an integral part of Ukraine.”

Most of Crimea’s 24 per cent ethnic Ukrainian population and its 12 per cent Tatar community hope that Mr Yatsenyuk is right. The Tatars, in particular, are fiercely opposed to returning to Russia’s rule, having been exiled en masse by the Kremlin to Siberia and central Asia in 1944.

“My fellow Crimean deputies who voted for this are simply mad . . . It’s clear they are doing someone else’s bidding. They have lost their minds!” wrote Crimean Tatar leader Refat Chubarov, who called for a boycott of a referendum that he suggested would be rigged.

Legislation
"With troops on the street and total legal bacchanalia, calling some sort of referendum without appropriate legislation could further destabilise the situation," he said, accusing parliament of "violating the rights and interests of all people in Crimea, regardless of nationality.

“If you’ve already decided to join [Russia], why do you need a referendum? It’s not just a breach of all laws of logic and normal process, it’s the destruction of the Crimean population. They announce [unification with Russia] and then, for form’s sake, say: ‘Well, now you can say your bit.’ ”

Mr Chubarov called on the international community to send peacekeepers to Crimea to reduce tension.

Unarmed military observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe were turned back from Crimea yesterday by unidentified men guarding a roadblock.

Donetsk protest
An Irish officer is one of 43 monitors from 23 countries taking part in the mission, which Russia does not support.

Moscow says it may send troops into other parts of Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers. In another tumultuous day in the eastern city of Donetsk, police ejected pro-Moscow protesters from local government headquarters and replaced the Russian flag with the Ukrainian on its roof.