| badgenome said:
Surveys as recent as last year show that Crimean Russians and Crimean Ukrainians are about as divided on their first identities as you'd expect, but there is no similar division among the Tatars. |
1) Do not bring anything from IRI, NED or Freedom House into the discussion, ever.
2) Didn't I just imply exactly that? How does that changes the fact of majority of Crimenians voted yes?
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badgenome said: As for me being usually reasonable, well, I think it's pretty unreasonable to assume that Putin is so much of a dedicated democrat that he'd roll the dice on this referendum by actually leaving it up to the voters. Not that the outcome was ever really in doubt, but getting a bare majority of 55-60% would have been a pretty big embarrassment and hardly the mandate that this sort of thing calls for. |
I'm not sure what you mean by "dedicated democrat", at least he has been elected for presidency by majority of voters. There's no need in setting up the referendum and cheating for Putin, when it's plain obvious for everyone who have minimal understanding of the situation that majority would vote yes. There's only one way your 55-60% claim could have been true -- if entire Tatar and Ukrainian population votes no -- that's far-fetched and ridiculous claim. As I've said it already I have no doubt that sizeable amount of Tatars either voted no or ignored the referendum whatsoever*, but I repeat there's no way Crimenian Ukrainians en masse voted any different than Crimenian Russians.
Here's an idea for you. There're international observers from multiple parties, government and non-government organizations etc. who have been there, it is their duty to check for violations, -- either you give me a report with references that states that violations are bad enought to consider the refrendum has failed, or you have no facts to confirm your opinion.
*scrath that, I've checked the voters percentage by region, there's no significant drop in Tatar regions of Crimea.
