SIMFEROPOL, Crimea – Eskender Bariyev has already clocked 400 kilometers this week in defense of his civil rights, and he will add another 400 on May 25. That’s two return journeys from the Crimean capital of Simferopol to the nearest polling station on mainland Ukraine, and the distance he is prepared to travel in order to vote for Ukraine’s next president.
“It’s not so much voting as a demonstration of my position,” said Bariyev. “That we as inhabitants of Crimea are not indifferent about who will be the next Ukrainian president, because the future of the country depends on it. And that I wish to participate in the political process, because I consider that we are part of Ukraine.”
Ukraine has not made it easy for Bariyev to show his support. Since the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March, the right and mechanism for Crimeans holding Ukrainian passports to vote in Ukrainian elections are governed primarily by the law on occupied territories, which Ukraine adopted in April. The law requires Ukrainian citizens to register in person at any polling station on the mainland no later than five days before the election. People have to return again to vote on Election Day.
According to the Central Election Commission, 6,000 Crimean voters – of a potential 1.8 million – have registered to vote on the mainland. Most of them are people who have already resettled there, said Andrei Krisko, head of the Ukrainian Committee of Voters’ Crimean branch. He expects less than a 1,000 to travel from Crimea on the day to vote because of the complicated process and long distance.
Bariyev, a member of the Crimean Tatar governing body, the Mejlis, and head of the Center for Political Analysis and Forecasting of Crimea, is an initiator of organized support for Crimeans who want to vote.
Over 20 civic organizations sent letters to the Central Election Committee, the Presidential Administration, the Verkhovna Rada and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Kyiv office, asking for voting procedures to be simplified. The group proposed setting up special polling stations on the border with the mainland, or establishing an electronic registration system.
Only the CEC replied, and said it could do nothing because it would require parliamentary enacted changes to the election law.
Some Crimeans who oppose the Russian annexation feel let down already by a perceived lack of determination from both Ukraine and the rest of world to protect them from Russian aggression. The failure to simplify voting procedures was an additional blow.
“I think Ukraine should have done more to enable Ukrainian citizens in Crimea to realize their rights,” said Bariyev, who thinks “tens of thousands” would go to vote if it had been possible to make only one trip. “It just required a bit of good will and interest. Otherwise people will get the impression that Ukraine doesn’t need us, and they’ll start to actively make peace with being a part of Russia.”
Krisko, who despite helping write the letters of appeal is not going to vote, said concerns about safety are another factor. The new border between Crimea and Ukraine is patrolled not just by border guards but by so-called Crimean self-defense brigades. These groups, which appeared in Crimea in March, continue to guard roads and government buildings in the peninsula, demanding documents and conducting on-the-spot searches despite lacking any legal authority to do so.
“They can search anyone they see as patriotic to Ukraine,” said Krisko, who has documented several cases of intimidation and harassment by self-defense brigades in the last six weeks.
A prevailing fear of Russian state security services is also a deterrent.
“You have to be a real patriot to go and vote; you deserve a medal,” said Olga, a native Russian from Simferopol who did not want to give her last name for fear of being identified as pro-Ukrainian. Olga planned to vote before she realized how expensive and time-consuming it would be, and after she read in Russian media that the Russian migration service would put all Crimeans crossing the border with Ukrainian passports on May 25 on a list. “Is it really worth it?” she asked doubtfully. “They’ll vote anyway without us, right?”
Bariyev and fellow Crimean Tatar Sinyavir Kadyrov are organizing cars to share petrol costs on May 25, so that people struggling with rising prices and unemployment can still afford to go and vote. They hope that even those who did not manage to register will travel to the mainland to show their solidarity, and to register for a second-round vote.
Kadyrov was one of the last Crimean Tatar dissidents to be released from Soviet prison, in 1988, for his support of the Crimean Tatar National Movement that agitated for the right to return to Crimea. A lifetime of civil disobedience means he refuses to be deterred either by threatened repression or by any state inaction on the part of Ukraine.
“It doesn’t mean we ourselves as citizens shouldn’t work to make the authorities do something,” he said. “A lot depends on citizens’ will.”
