Crimea and 'Nazis' in Ukraine

by Xatshe, DAPFC Ambassador to Ukraine

Every day my friends and I receive a lot of questions from our fellows from abroad and we try to explain the real situation here. Here are some questions we received recently from a Canadian buddy.

QUESTION 1: Would you say that the interim government in Ukraine is as far-right and fascist as the official Russian narrative says that they are?

It is absolutely not true. The current government consists primarily of members of a liberal conservative party, "Batkivshchyna", and the absolute majority of ministers and officials are not new to the politics - most of them held positions in the previous governments. The nationalist party "Svoboda" has also gained some seats in the Cabinet, but overall they are not hugely influential, and I won't go as far as calling them "fascists" or "neo-nazis". The most notorious right-winged movement, "Pravy Sector", does not have any positions in the interim government and I don't believe the government operates under the pressure of any "radicals".

QUESTION 2: What about Crimeans asking for Russian protection from fascists and the banning of the Russian language? I know it is very likely exaggerated but is it complete fabrication?

As there are no fascists in the government, there was no threat to Crimeans. It is true that a huge part of Crimean population considers themselves Russians and is opposed to anything pro-Ukrainian due to poor internal policy of all the previous governments. But there was no threat to those people, as the new government would probably leave them alone just as all previous ones did; and no mythical neo-nazis were going to invade their homes. In fact, it is the Ukrainians and Tatars who are in real danger in Crimea now - there were numerous reports of people being threatened or beaten for speaking Ukrainian or wearing the state flag colours, journalists and Maidan activists being kidnapped and tortured; a few days ago a body of Crimean Tatar man with traces of torture was found; anti-Semitic and anti-Tatar graffiti appeared on the walls days after Russian forces got Crimea under their control. link:www.stopfake.org/en/fake-jewis…

The ban of Russian language - now this is absolutely ridiculous. First: the law about regional languages, which caused huge controversy in Ukraine, was adopted in 2012. For 20 years Ukrainian was the only official language, and while not everybody was happy with it, there was absolutely no oppression of Russian speakers - believe me when I say that, because Russian is my native language. I grew up in a 90% Russian-speaking city and never had any difficulties at all. Official documents should be filed in Ukrainian, TV and radio networks were obliged to have a percentage of their programs in Ukrainian, movie theatres should show Ukrainian-dubbed films, but that's about it. The controversial law was adopted primarily to stir old arguments and distract people from speeding corruption: a huge amount of ridiculous budget expenses and real estate deals were approved in the days when people were protesting against the language law. Anyway, this law was NOT cancelled - the acting president vetoed the Parliament's decision to cancel it.

Crimean parliament facade: the Crimean-Tatar language name is being knocked down, and Ukrainian was already knocked down. This comes after Putin's promise of 3 state languages in the Crimea - RU, UA, and Cr-Tat. scontent-b-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hp…

QUESTION 3: Furthermore, concerning the referendum about Crimea joining Russia a couple of days ago that got 96% of the popular vote:  do you believe this was a free referendum or was there corruption involved?

Even though there are many people who sincerely think Crimea would be better off as a part of Russia, their number is far from 96%. From what I've read and seen about this referendum, it was staged, and in a very dirty way. No international observers were present (at least not from any internationally recognized organizations; maybe there were some members of nationalist European parties), journalists were banned from the polling stations, Russian navy officers and their families were allowed to vote (despite not being Ukrainian citizens!), there was no control over who was voting - people could (and some did) vote several times in different stations, or vote for their family members who didn't come in person. And don't forget the presence of a considerable military force of an interested party de-facto controlling the region. That doesn't sound very democratic, does it?  Oh.. in Sevastopol 123% of the people voted, a person who died in 1983 suddenly arose from the grave and voted for joining to Russia, etc. - link: www.stopfake.org/en/124-of-res…


PS:
A Ukrainian officer was killed by a Russian soldier and several got injures yesterday in Crimea (3/20/2014).