Crimea referendum: live reportAFP

Crimea referendum: live report

By Nick Morrison Joe Mouzo and (AFP) – 19 minutes ago 

Simferopol — 17:23 GMT - Sevastopol turnout 'at 83.5%' - As many as 83.5% of voters in Crimea's capital Sevastopol had cast their votes in the referendum by 6pm local time (1600 GMT), the Sevastopol electoral commission tells Kiev-based news agency Interfax-Ukraine.
The polling stations are open until 8pm (1800 GMT).
17:15 GMT - Germany ramps up rhetoric - Germany buys around one third of its oil and gas from Russia, but Berlin has not shied away from warning it will impose stiff penalties if Moscow annexes Crimea.
Germany Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has ramped up the rhetoric and issued a sharp warning to Russia over its seizure of Crimea and Sunday's referendum, our correspondent Deborah Cole reports from Berlin.
"We did not go looking for this confrontation. But if Russia does not back down at the last minute, the EU foreign ministers will give an appropriate initial response on Monday," he told Sunday's edition of the newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
"We are in an extremely dangerous situation. Tensions are also building in the east of Ukraine. Russia has until now blocked every exit option, every step toward de-escalation and apparently wants to create facts on the ground that we cannot accept."
17:06 GMT - KERRY URGES UKRAINE CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS, RUSSIA PULLBACK - US Secretary of State John Kerry has urged Moscow to pull back Russian forces to their bases in Crimea in return for constitutional reforms in Ukraine to protect minority rights, a US official said according to our correspondents in Washington.
"The secretary made clear that this crisis can only be resolved politically and that as Ukrainians take the necessary political measures going forward, Russia must reciprocate by pulling forces back to base, and addressing the tensions and concerns about military engagement," the senior State Department official said.
17:02 GMT - EU SAYS CRIMEA REFERENDUM 'ILLEGAL', WILL DECIDE SANCTIONS MONDAY - Crimea's referendum on joining Russia is "illegal and illegitimate", the European Union says, announcing that it would decide on sanctions on Monday.
"The referendum is illegal and illegitimate and its outcome will not be recognised," the European Council and European Commission presidents said in a joint statement.
EU foreign ministers "will evaluate the situation tomorrow in Brussels and decide on additional measures" against Moscow, they said.
16:52 GMT - Turnout 'at 73.41%' - Official turnout figures from the referendum are being alerted by Russia's state-owned news agency Ria Novosti.
By 8pm Moscow time (1600 GMT), 1,124,000 people or 73.41% of the population of Crimea had voted, the agency reports.
16:35 GMT - 'Crimea = Sudetenland' - Many of the demonstrators marching in west London are holding banners in protest against Russia's actions, an AFP photographer says.
Two of the banners read "Russia out of Crimea, out of Ukraine" and "Crimea = Sudetenland", a reference to Nazi Germany's annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938 in the build-up to World War II.
16:10 GMT - Rally in London - As previously reported, around two thousand demonstrators holding Ukrainian flags are marching towards the Russian embassy near Hyde Park in west London in protest against Russia's actions in Crimea and Ukraine (see embedded photo).
16:08 GMT - Status quo not an option - Voters in Crimea can choose to become part of Russia or retain more autonomy but stay in Ukraine -- a vote for the status quo is not an option, AFP correspondent Dario Thuburn explains.
The referendum committee has said turnout was at 44 percent a third of the way through voting.
16:00 GMT - Journalists declined entry - In Crimea, Cossacks and pro-Moscow militias have been seen patrolling at some polling stations and Russian flags were being flown everywhere from city buses to convoys of bikers roaming the streets, our correspondent Dario Thuburn reports.
Accredited journalists including some from AFP have been prevented from entering polling stations in the port city of Sevastopol and the regional capital Simferopol, and several people were seen voting in Sevastopol before the polls officially opened, Thuburn writes.
Foreign observers were present but security watchdog the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) declined an invitation to monitor saying it was not official as it did not come from Ukraine's national government.
15:52 GMT - Two thousand in London - In London, almost two thousand demonstrators waving Ukrainian flags are gathered in front of the Russian Embassy, an AFP photographer there reports.
More details as we get them.
15:47 GMT - 'Clown shows and circuses' - The majority Muslim Tatar population in Bakhchysaray, an inland city of 25,000, has stayed at home on the cold and rainy referendum day, AFP's Michel Moutot reports.
With the mass deportations by Stalin in 1944 still fresh in their memories, Tatars have opposed Crimea becoming part of Russia from the start and called for a boycott of the referendum.
"Of course we won't vote. I won't go and I think all the Tatars of Crimea won't go either," Dilyara Seitvelieva, the community's representative in Bakhchysara, tells AFP.
"I don't need this referendum, I will not go and vote. My life's good as it is," an elderly man agrees on his way to pray at the small Mahmud Sami mosque.
Crimean Tatar leader Refat Chubarov denounces the referendum, telling Inter television on Sunday: "We, Crimean Tatars, have never taken part in clown shows and circuses."
15:39 GMT - Ukrainian passport - In Bakhchysaray, the main centre of Crimea's native Muslim Tatar community, Russian-speakers are the only people turning up at the polls, as Tatars have decided to boycott the referendum, AFP's Michel Moutot reports.
Elvira is at the polling station early with her teenage children and says she hopes the vote will afford them a better future.
"These two are going to grow up in Russia and that's a good thing," she says, her hands on her son and daughter's shoulders.
"They will have more opportunities, more prospects. It's a rich and powerful country," she says. "This is the last time I use my Ukrainian passport. At least I hope so."
15:20 GMT - PRO-RUSSIANS STORM SECURITY HQ IN UKRAINE'S DONETSK - Pro-Russian groups have stormed the local headquarters of Ukraine's SBU security services and the prosecutor's office in the flashpoint eastern city of Donetsk, an AFP reporter witnesses.
Protesters, demanding the release of their self-appointed "governor," attacked the two buildings without meeting much opposition from police, the reporter says.
15:12 GMT - 'Historic moment' - "This is a historic moment, everyone will live happily," Sergiy Aksyonov, the local pro-Moscow prime minister, tells reporters after casting his ballot in the regional capital Simferopol.
"We will celebrate this evening," Aksyonov said, after a man waving a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag and demanding it be put up inside the polling station was pushed away by security guards.
15:04 GMT - WELCOME TO AFP'S LIVE REPORT ON A UNIQUE referendum in Crimea where people are voting on breaking away from Ukraine to join Russia, a vote which has precipitated a Cold War-style security crisis on Europe's eastern frontier.
Ukraine's new government and most of the international community except Russia have said they will not recognise a result expected to be overwhelmingly in favour of immediate secession.
The Black Sea peninsula is inhabited mostly by ethnic Russians and has been seized by Russian forces over the past month after the ouster of Ukraine's pro-Kremlin leader in February, plunging US-Russia ties to their lowest point since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Preliminary results were expected to be announced soon after polls close at 8:00 pm local time (1800 GMT) so stay with us for updates from our correspondents in Crimea and in Kiev throughout the after
end quote from:
Crimea referendum: live report