It is unclear what will happen if the
Crimea referendum goes ahead as
planned. Two status options are
possible, should, as is expected, those
who vote repudiate Ukraine. The first
is the choice presented on the current
ballot, namely that Crimea be „reunited with Russia as part of the
Russian Federation.‟ The „re-united‟
frame primes voters to view Crimea as
natural Russian territory, as if a
nostalgic past overrules and negates
the present. The Russian Federation
has to officially accede to this
outcome. Should this not happen
immediately, Crimea may join the
ranks of post-Soviet de facto states.
Will Putin take Crimea?
Public opinion surveys my colleagues
and I have conducted over the last few
years in Transnistria, Abkhazia and
South Ossetia reveal residual Russian
residents in these territories to be
deeply regretful about the collapse of
the Soviet Union, trusting of the
Russian leadership, and supportive of
local Russian troop presences. Only
amongst ethnic Abkhazians , and
Georgians in Abkhazia, is there an
aspiration for a future other than
integration
into
the
Russian
21
Like Karadžić‟s gambit, the move is
deeply polarising, exploiting local
ethnic factors to serve a larger
geopolitical goal. While ethnic
Russians are a majority in Crimea, not
all necessarily see themselves as proRussia and anti-Ukraine. Russian
ethnicity and language primacy does
not mean dis-identification with
Ukraine. The Russian invasion and
referendum, however, is forcing a
binary choice on residents, a choice
depicted in stark terms on at least one
referendum poster as one between
Russia and Nazism. Crimean Tatar
leaders, recognizing the geopolitical
coercion behind an ostensibly
democratic procedure, are calling for
a boycott of the referendum.
Page
years, Russian President Vladimir
Putin reportedly regards it as a
„cobbled together country.‟ Even
more blatantly than Milošević, he has
intervened with Russian military forces
to pre-emptively protect the local
ethnic Russian population from a
supposed „fascist‟ threat (though there
is no evidence of ethnicised violence).
Sponsoring a local strongman as the
new prime minister of Crimea, Russian
forces have engineered an extra-legal
referendum on 16 March, to give a
democratic imprimatur to Russia
acquiring Crimea.