SIMFEROPOL, UKRAINE, MARCH 27 -- Voters in the Crimean peninsula, a region of Ukraine once ruled by Russia, appeared to be voting overwhelmingly today for greater independence. Such a step would advance efforts to re-link parts of Ukraine with Russia and could set the stage for a confrontation between the two countries.
Nationalists in Russia and Ukraine have argued stridently over which country should control Crimea and other areas in Ukraine heavily populated by Russians. A vote for autonomy in those regions today would escalate that conflict and would increase regional tensions within this nation of 52 million people, the most important former Soviet republic after Russia.
The governments of presidents Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk have tried to sidestep the territorial dispute, but Russian nationalists forced questions of regional autonomy onto the ballot in today's first free, nationwide elections for parliament in Ukraine. And, with the country's economy in collapse and its population deeply divided, many voters went to the polls in a surly mood.
Results in the legislative votes were spotty tonight, with 5,833 can didates running for 450 seats in the Supreme Rada, as the parliament is known. Voting was said to be heavy, particularly in the Ukrainian-speaking western and central regions of the country, where nationalism has been on the rise. The turnout appeared somewhat lighter in the Russified east and south, although greater than the 50 percent needed to validate the poll.
The complete makeup of the next parliament is not expected to be known until after a runoff election April 10.
Here in Crimea, a diamond-shaped peninsula that juts into the Black Sea, 70 percent of the 2.7 million residents are ethnic Russians who take it as an article of faith that they would be far better off ruled by Moscow than by the Ukrainian government in Kiev.
For decades under Communist rule, Crimea was a kind of paradise for the Soviet elite, who flocked here for the sun and surf and built extravagant summer homes on the coast. The peninsula had been ruled for centuries by Russia, but in a show of Slavic and Soviet solidarity, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to Ukrainian jurisdiction in 1954. The gesture seemed politically unimportant then; the Soviet masters were unchanged.
But since Ukraine broke away from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, the economy in Crimea has nose-dived as Kiev blocked all moves toward reform and led the country to a monthly inflation rate approaching 100 percent. The pro-Russian majority in Crimea has accused the Ukrainian government of ineptitude.
In January, Crimeans elected as their region's president an ethnic Russian, Yuri Meshkov, who promised to move the peninsula squarely into Moscow's orbit. Meshkov, a 49-year-old lawyer, proposed a referendum on Crimean autonomy, which Kravchuk promptly annulled. But the vote went ahead today anyway, fashioned as an "opinion poll" to get around Kiev's objections.
Voters interviewed at a polling station in Simferopol, the Crimean capital, said they were voting in favor of greater powers for Meshkov, dual Russian-Ukrainian citizenship for Crimeans and a treaty to govern relations between Crimea and Ukraine on a more equal basis.
Most of those interviewed said they had not bothered to vote for representatives to the parliament in Kiev. They voted only for the local Crimean parliament, they said. Many were apparently motivated by Meshkov, who said on television Friday night that he would simply take his ballot for the Ukrainian parliament, put it in his pocket and walk out of the voting booth.
The popular mood was clear on a street corner outside Crimea's government headquarters, where elderly citizens can be found speechifying and arguing all day long. Snide locals call them "the council of elders."
When a reporter approached at midday to ask if they had voted in the Ukrainian parliamentary elections, the response was a loud, unanimous "no!" -- and a half-dozen men and women pulled from their pockets the unmarked ballots to prove it.
"We don't need Ukraine! They are trying to suppress us!" shouted one elderly woman.
"We have our roots in Russia, in Russian culture," chimed in an elderly man with shaggy eyebrows. "Crimea will be Russian again!"
Without going quite that far, Meshkov has made it clear that he is sympathetic. By his decision, this weekend Crimea switched to Moscow time, one hour ahead of Kiev. Last week, he declared that Crimean soldiers should serve only in Crimea, not in other parts of Ukraine. That statement was immediately rebuffed by the Ukrainian defense minister and caused jitters in Kiev that his real goal is to raise a Crimean army.
In an interview today, Meshkov denied he harbors such dreams. "The situation now is that we are trying to rescue ourselves from a nationalistic Ukraine with the help of a democratic Russia," he said. Ukraine could become a "showcase" of economic reforms if it could slip from Ukrainian control, he said. Special correspondent Robert Seely contributed to this report from Kiev.