UKRAINE-CRISIS/CRIMEA-UKRAINIANS Crimean Ukrainians speak of life changes a year after annexation

Record ID: 259507

  • Title: UKRAINE-CRISIS/CRIMEA-UKRAINIANS Crimean Ukrainians speak of life changes a year after annexation
  • Date: 11th March 2015
  • Summary: ILLUSTRATION ON WALL OF CHURCH VARIOUS OF PEOPLE ATTENDING PRAYER
  • Embargoed: 26th March 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA6JDEEO3O9O9QLQBW5WLPGGO0D
  • Story Text: In a small room in central Kiev a group of refugees from Crimea are attending a Crimean Tatars language lesson. The session will be followed immediately by a Ukrainian language lesson.
    The classes are organised by a non-governmental organisation -Krym SOS - created to assist refugees from Crimea, after the peninsula's annexation by Russia last year.
    According to the organisation at least 40,000 people have fled the region since March 2014.
    A referendum held on the Crimean peninsula, which Ukraine and Western countries rejected as illegal, resulted in a 97-percent vote in favour of uniting Crimea with the Russian Federation. On March 17, the day after the vote, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to annex the peninsula.
    Lyudmila, an ethnic Ukrainian from Kiev, lived in Crimea's resort of Yalta for ten years, after she was married. She worked as a teacher at a local school.
    Lyudmila and her husband fled to Kiev after the annexation. A year on, she reflects their journey back to their home may take longer than the couple had imagined.
    "When we were leaving - we realised that we are leaving because it was impossible for us to stay there, but we hoped that we would return soon. Now we see that this "soon" has stretched into a long time. I hope that even if we can't go back soon, we will return for sure," Lyudmila, who now works as a volunteer at Krym SOS.
    In the resort city Yalta, there are some Ukrainians who have chosen to remain in Crimea.
    Gennady, a manager at a private tourist company, says he can see Crimea moving backward toward a life that resembles Soviet Union times.
    "I see my perspectives in a totally different European society. I would like to live and work here while understanding that it (European course) is realistic. But here we are returning back to some kind of Soviet Union, some kind of Belarus," Gennady told Reuters TV recently.
    He says his business which organised tours for holidaymakers has suffered significantly in the last year, with Westerners no longer visiting the Black Sea resort as a result of sanctions.
    Gennady has refused to receive a Russian passport, which Crimea residents had to take on. Instead, he has applied for a residence permit, while maintaining his Ukrainian identification.
    Speaking while seated along the picturesque Yalta embankment, Gennady says he remains hopeful the region will overcome the current conflict and move toward real reforms.
    "It is possible that Ukraine will be strangled by military means, economic collapse, but the people (in Ukraine) are the most important, their mentality which can in the future lead to growth and all these reforms and changes in our life," says Gennady.
    Crimean authorities have faced criticism by rights groups for stifling independent media in the peninsula post annexation.
    The Ukrainian Black Sea TV company was one of the first groups to face the axe.
    Lyudmila Zhuravlyova, acting president of the Ukrainian Black Sea TV company, met Reuters reporters in an abandoned newsroom, with computers unplugged and equipment piled on desks.
    Zhuravlyova says her main task now is to close the office of what was once one of Crimea's largest private TV channels, broadcasting in the peninsula for 20 years.
    "Our company was the first in Crimea which was taken off air," she tells Reuters, seated in an abandoned newsroom, with computers unplugged and equipment piled on desks.
    "It was on March 3 when mass rallies were taking place on a square here in Crimea, when everyone here was walking around carrying Russian flags. That's when all of this happened. We covered all of this and probably the authorities didn't like it because of our position in coverage. We tried to show it objectively: if there were Tatars there - we filmed Tatars. If there was confrontation and people died - we also showed it, we didn't try to silence it," she adds.
    The company has already moved its main office to Kiev and hopes to keep an office in Crimea.
    But the decision lies in the hands of Russian authorities.
    Pro-Russian Crimea leader Sergei Aksyonov insists there are no problems for Ukrainian nationals and businesses on the peninsula, though all contacts with official Kiev have been ceased.
    "From the point of view of keeping contact - with the officials we do not keep it, with Ukrainian citizens - we have normal direct contact," Aksyonov said, speaking from his office in Simferopol.
    "I have lots of friends from Ukraine who studied with me in Crimea, in Simferopol military and political high school, they all stayed there in Ukraine and they all are complaining and saying: 'We want to return to Crimea, because we are fed up with everything, there is no order here, total corruption. They steal now as they did before,'" he added.
    Aksyonov's estimation of the numbers of people that have left Crimea since March last year is in sharp contrast with those given by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR and Krym SOS.
    "All in all in Crimea only 1,500 people refused to get Russian citizenship. They specifically wrote a note about it, these are Crimeans, who lived here and had the right to get (Russian) citizenship. Only 1,500 refusals in a year - and that's it, it's a ceiling, they are those who wanted to leave," said Aksyonov.
    A few kilometres away from the Crimean government headquarters, in a large but almost empty cathedral, Archbishop Klyment of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kiev Patriarchate in Crimea is leading a prayer.
    The Cathedral of Saints Olga and Vladimir is the last one he has left. Six others were taken over by the Moscow Patriarchate.
    "In the past year we came to such a state that we say: 'May God give us a chance to celebrate Easter in the city of Simferopol' and it is very likely that this Easter could be the last holiday celebrated by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kiev Patriarchate in Crimea, on the occupied territory," Archbishop Klyment tells Reuters, as the sound of prayers echo in the church.
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