The Referendum took place on March 16 resulting in landslide win, 96% voted in favour of Russia becoming the governing body of Crimea, with only 4% voting in favor of Ukraine.
The referendum was called a ‘scandalous sham’ by the Western country leaders. The results surprised not only the Ukrainians, who most of them voted in favor of Ukraine as the governing body, Aleksey Rominenko, 27, an international Russian student living in London, said:
“Yes I am Russian, and yes I still have all my family living in Russia, but nor I, nor does my family support what Putin is doing. This referendum is ridiculous; the results were clearly manipulated with, how is it possible that we have won by such a landslide when most of the population there are Ukrainians, who also fought in Kiev for their country.”
When asked whether he supports Putin’s plans to revive the Soviet Union, Aleksey answers: “By all means yes I do think that Russia is a great country, but its government isn’t. Me, the country, we don’t want a dictator, I am sure that if this continues we might end up with a revolution in Russia too.”
Crimea is now established as part of Russia, the decision has been officially signed upon and declared by both Russia and Ukraine over a few days after the referendum results were received.
However, the action is still not accepted by most of Ukraine and rest of the world. International summits are still taking place to agree on what actions should be taken in the region.
The referendum came into place during a fragile time for the Ukrainian government just after the revolution came to pass.
Andar Kisiev, 34, a Ukrainian shop supervisor living in London, said:
“I used to live in Crimea when I was younger, we all spoke Ukrainian, we all called ourselves Ukrainian, even the people who moved there from Russia. I feel completely disgusted by the referendum happening in the first place. Nobody told the Crimean people who requested the referendum, because it was definitely not them.”
The situation in Crimea is still unfolding with the West not accepting the establishment, the eventual destiny of the region and Ukraine remains standing with a question mark.
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