SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine — Crimea set about
transforming itself into a corner of Russia on Monday in ways profound and
mundane, formally petitioning to join the Russian Federation, and
deciding to adopt the ruble as its official currency and advance the clocks by
two hours to be on Moscow time.
Acting on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an order recognizing
Crimea as an independent state, Crimean authorities passed a flurry of laws
to scrap Ukrainian influence and pave the way for annexation to Russia.
Legislators in the renamed parliament, the State Council of the Republic of
Crimea, nullified Ukrainian laws and nationalized all Ukrainian state property.
On March 30, Crimea will switch time zones. And starting April 1, pensions will
be paid in rubles, though the Ukrainian hryvnia will not be phased out until
January 2016.
Coming just one day after a referendum in which almost 97 percent of voters
supported breaking away from Ukraine, the rapid-fire changes left some Crimeans
uneasy about what will happen next.
“All those people were out there waving flags in the streets last night, but
the rest of us are just waiting — for what, we don’t know,” said Dimitry
Kozimov, a cafe manager in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, who is worried
because his supplies of fresh meat from Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, have
stopped. He has more questions than answers. Will his liquor license cost more?
Can he still commute between his home in Ukraine and his job in a new Russian
territory? Will he be taxed twice? “The only thing I’m sure of is that this is
going to be a very difficult time for us.”
The whirlwind of activity by lawmakers failed to quell a pervasive sense of
limbo — among Ukrainian troops stationed at Crimean bases and the region’s
minority Muslim Tatar population. As the complicated unwinding began, many
wondered whether they fit in.
At a Ukrainian military base in Belbek, outside Sevastopol, troops said they
would fight to the last man if ordered by their commanders in Kiev. But they may
be offered a choice: to stay and serve in a reconfigured force under Russian
control or head back to what’s left of Ukraine.
“Something is going to happen. But we don’t know what,” said a soldier at the
base, where Russians control the airstrip and Ukrainians run the rest of the
facility.
Nearby, at base A2991, relations are warmer. Russian and Ukrainian troops
swap food and hot water, and Russian soldiers stationed across the road charge
cellphones from an extension cord run over to them by the Ukrainians.
“This is friendship between Slavic people,” shouted a soldier plugging in his
phone to the makeshift power supply. He gave his name as Pavel and said he is
from central Russia.
Dmitri Kozackovich, the Ukrainian deputy commander at the base, shrugged.
“They’ve been camping out there for three weeks,” he said of the
Russians.
At another base in the area, A2355, marooned officers said there is no sign
of promised reinforcements and hinted at a sense of abandonment.
“Don’t forget we exist,” said a major who gave only his first name, Yuri.
Among the more anxious groups are the 300,000 Crimean Tatars, many of whose
leaders boycotted the referendum and challenged its honesty.
“There is just no way these figures are right,” said Mustafa Abliazov, a
member of the Simferopol council for Crimean Tatars. “It was clear they decided
way ahead of time that everything would be falsified.
For Tatars, this is a big threat. We are an unarmed and law-abiding
people, but how can we tolerate something like this?”
Simferopol streets that had been filled with celebratory throngs Sunday night
after the vote were quiet Monday. Some Crimeans pondered their next steps.
“Some of my friends have already left. I’m going to wait and watch events and
gather my courage,” said Dennis Matzola, 26, who had protested against the
referendum and said he had found leaflets with his name and photograph pasted on
neighborhood walls, telling people to report him as a traitor.
Yet many Crimeans remained jubilant at the referendum’s result.
In downtown Sevastopol, small groups huddled against an icy wind and shouted
the name of Putin and sang the Russian national anthem — or at least what they
knew of it.
Valentina Slavchenko, 58, said she woke up Monday at 6 a.m. in a joyous mood.
She works at a hospital, where all the official paperwork and all the medication
labels are written in Ukrainian, which she does not speak. She said she spent
years doing her job with the help of a Russian-Ukrainian dictionary and
translation pages on the Internet.
“We are all so happy now,” she said. “They should have made Ukraine a country
with two official languages. If they had shown us more respect, we could have
lived in Ukraine. Now I’m sure they regret it.”
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