2014 Crimean status referendum

[17] Thirteen members of the United Nations Security Council voted in favor of a resolution declaring the referendum invalid, but Russia vetoed it and China abstained.

[18][19] A United Nations General Assembly resolution was later adopted, by a vote of 100 in favor vs. 11 against with 58 abstentions, which declared the referendum invalid and affirmed Ukraine's territorial integrity.

[22] Crimea and Sevastopol are neighboring subdivisions of Ukraine located in the Crimean peninsula, a region with a long and complex history.

[36] A poll conducted in Crimea in 2013 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 35.9% of Crimeans support the unification of the entirety of Ukraine with Russia.

[37] The poll was repeated between February 8 – 18, 2014 (just days before the ousting of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych), with the amount of those wishing to join Ukraine and Russia rising to then 41%.

Amidst tensions in the region during the Ukrainian revolution, On February 27, Russian forces cut the Crimean Peninsula off from the mainland Ukraine and took over the Supreme Council of Crimea.

Under armed occupation, the Crimean regional government was dissolved and reconstituted under Russian supervision, and voted to hold a referendum on the status of Crimea on May 25.

[39] Russian militia commander Igor Girkin recounted that his squad "collected" the deputies into the chambers, and had to "forcibly drive them to vote".

[40][41] Enver Abduraimov, member of the parliament presidium, said that he did not go inside when he saw that armed guards who secured the building were confiscating all communications devices from deputies.

Andriy Krysko, head of the Crimean branch of the Voters Committee of Ukraine, announced that no one from the parliament secretariat was in the building when voting took place.

[42] The referendum was approved by the Supreme Council of Crimea in February but the Central Election Commission of Ukraine denounced it by stating that the Crimean authorities do not possess the legal jurisdiction to conduct it.

[43] Regarding the referendum's initial purpose, The Daily Telegraph reported on February 27, that it, "appears to be for greater autonomy within Ukraine rather than for full independence.

On 14 March, the referendum was deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine,[50] and a day later, the Verkhovna Rada formally dissolved the Crimean parliament.

[b][62] Many commentators, including those at The New York Times, Kyiv Post, and Fox News, argued that both choices would result in de facto independence.

[74][75][76][85] Party of Regions MP Yuriy Miroshnychenko claimed on March 11 that "the Crimean referendum is illegitimate, and its holding must be immediately stopped".

[86] Another Party of Regions MP, Hanna Herman, commented the same day about Yanukovych's press conference, "He needs to ... prevent the illegal referendum".

[69] Shortly after the referendum was called, Ukrainian TV channels were made unavailable for Crimean viewers, some of them were replaced with Russian stations.

[69] Unsigned billboards and leaflets campaigning for the referendum, describing new Ukraine government as fascists and showing economic reasons to join Russia, appeared throughout Crimea.

[88][89][90] On March 10, 2014 the de facto Prime Minister of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, made an unofficial verbal invitation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the plebiscite.

[96] OSCE also published a report about their observations which "produced significant evidence of equipment consistent with the presence of Russian Federation military personnel in the vicinity of the various roadblocks encountered".

[100][101][102] According to Yale University historian Timothy Snyder, the Russian government invited individuals belonging to European far-right, anti-semitic and neo-Nazi parties to serve as observers.

[118] According to Miloslav Soušek (the Vysoké Mýto mayor), the course of the referendum was comparable to the elections in the Czech Republic; he claimed he saw no soldiers in the town.

[125][126][127][128] Mustafa Dzhemilev, a recent Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, reports that according to his sources the actual turnout was only 32.4%.

[130] Andrey Illarionov, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Russian government adviser, cited results of previous polls over past three years showing the Crimean support for joining Russia between 23 and 41 percent to conclude that the actual support for the reunification of Crimea with Russia was about 34 percent and that at least two thirds of Crimea did not vote for it.

[135] According to survey carried out by Pew Research Center in April 2014, the majority of Crimean residents say they believed the referendum was free and fair (91%) and that the government in Kyiv ought to recognize the results of the vote (88%).

The survey commissioners, John O'Loughlin and Gerard Toal, wrote in their Open Democracy article that, while they felt that the referendum was "an illegal act under international law", their survey shows "It is also an act that enjoys the widespread support of the peninsula's inhabitants, with the important exception of its Crimean Tatar population" with "widespread support for Crimea's decision to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation one year ago".

[141] In March 2019, Russian public opinion research centre, VTsIOM, published the results of a new survey of Crimea in which 89% of respondents said they would vote to "reunify" with Russia if a referendum on the matter were held next week.

On the same day, the acting president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov, ordered the withdrawal of Ukrainian armed forces from Crimean peninsula.

[222] On 16 May the new Russian authorities of Crimea issued a ban on the annual commemorations of the anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars by Stalin in 1944, citing "possibility of provocation by extremists" as a reason.

[224] Additionally, Mejlis reported, that officers of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) raided Tatar homes in the same week, on the pretense of "suspicion of terrorist activity".