You're reading: Ukrainians in shock over loss of Crimea

While many Crimeans sang and danced in euphoria over joining the Russian Federation after President Vladimir Putin annexation of Ukraine’s peninsula in March 18, most of Ukraine coped with feelings of anger, sadness and helplessness.

The sham referendum held under military occupation showed, according to the Kremlin, that 96 percent of voters in the two-million person peninsula favored rejoining Russia and renouncing the status quo in Ukraine. Keeping the status quo was not an option and the results conflicted with recent polls showing only 42 percent of Crimeans would accept such an option.

So Ukrainians – who with Crimean Tatars – make up more than 40 percent of Crimea’s population are skeptical.

“I am sure if the referendum were held according to the law or at least honestly, the ‘for Russia’ results wouldn’t be higher than 50 percent,” said Maya Mamenko, 55, a tourist guide and interpreter from Yalta, Crimea.

Mamenko said she boycotted the vote and knows a lot of people who did. Accounting for some of the Kremlin’s reported 82 percent turnout, Marnenko said that others voted out of fear of having the voters’ lists checked later. Others did so because their parents “wanted to live in Russia.”

“I really believed that the results were faked when I was going back to Sevastopol from Kyiv and all three people who I was sharing my compartment with were against Russian and wanted to live in Ukraine,” a woman said.

According to Mamenko, the problems have already begun. Banks cash only little sums of money per day, while some banks just close.

“It is not clear how we change documents and what if we don’t want Russian passports, what is going to happen to our property,” Mamenko said “I do not want to live here anymore, but I am not sure I can leave my apartment and it won’t be just taken away.”

Mamenko also said tourism in Crimea is on the edge of collapse. “I’ve got most of the orders canceled for now, cruise companies haven’t cancelled theirs yet but said they cannot guarantee anything,” she said.

People from outside the peninsula share the concerns and agree they now will exclude Crimea from their lists of potential vacation places.

Mamenko’s colleague, Kyiv tourist guide Anna Andrusyk, said she lost at least Hr 6,000 in March alone due to the latest events in Ukraine.

She is also despondent about the turn of events.

“I had my best vacation in Crimea – high up in the mountains, walking up to 10 kilometers a day, we planned to had the same one this year, but we won’t now,” Andrusyk said. “It is not a new border that would stop me from going to Crime, but a principle. I know a lot of people in Crimea who don’t want to live in Russia.”

Others in Kyiv just find Crimea separation nonsense.

“The peninsula is literally a part of our land, how on Earth can it belong to someone but us,” said Alla Tsarenko, actress from Kyiv. “I never liked Crimea as a resort, there are so many cheaper and better places in the world, but now I wouldn’t go there just so all these soviet babushkas and aggressive sailors would understand what are they without Ukraine,” she says and explains that Crimea depend on Ukraine even when it comes to drinking water.

Those in the east of the country also said they would boycott Crimea from now and on. “It is just dangerous to go there anytime soon because of their crazy self-defense or whatever they call the guys who kidnap people and Russian militants, besides that very difficult morally,” said Maria Prokopenko, a student from Donetsk.

Oleksandra Serhienko, a mother of two children and a school teacher, from Zaporizhzhya said she won’t miss Crimea. “I just want to evacuate our militants and normal people and then surround the peninsula the high fence and let all the idiots with the Russian flags live there happily,” she said.

Many Ukrainians are unhappy with the new government in Kyiv’s response – or lack of response.

“I have this disgusting feeling that they have given up the Crimea, and are giving up the east and soon will give up the whole of Ukraine,” Serhienko from Zaporizhzhya said.

Olha Luchkova, a crafts tutor from Dnipropetrovsk,said she blames Crimeans.

“They had absolutely nothing to do between seasons and instead of building a good life for themselves, gave up a piece of Ukrainian land to Russia,” she explained.