Under Russia, Life in Crimea Grows Chaotic
SIMFEROPOL, Crimea — After Russia
annexed Crimea practically overnight, the Russian bureaucrats handling
passports and residence permits inhabited the building of their
Ukrainian predecessors, where Roman Nikolayev now waits daily with a
seemingly mundane question.
His daughter and granddaughter were newly arrived from Ukraine
when they suddenly found themselves in a different country, so he
wonders if they can become legal residents. But he cannot get inside to
ask because he is No. 4,475 on the waiting list for passports. At most,
200 people are admitted each day from the crowd churning around the
tall, rusty iron gate.
“They
set up hotlines, but nobody ever answers,” said Mr. Nikolayev, 54, a
trim, retired transportation manager with a short salt-and-pepper beard.
“Before
we had a pretty well-organized country — life was smooth,” he said,
sighing. “Then, within the space of two weeks, one country became
another.” He added, “Eto bardak,” using the Russian for bordello and
meaning, “This is a mess.”
One
month after the lightning annexation, residents of this Black Sea
peninsula find themselves living not so much in a different state,
Russia, as in a state of perpetual confusion. Declaring the change, they
are finding, was far easier than actually carrying it out.
The
chaotic transition comes amid evolving tensions in nearby eastern
Ukraine, where the possible outcomes include a Crimea-annexation replay.
In
Crimea now, few institutions function normally. Most banks are closed.
So are land registration offices. Court cases have been postponed
indefinitely. Food imports are haphazard. Some foreign companies, like
McDonald’s, have shut down.
Other
changes are more sinister. “Self-defense units,” with no obvious
official mandate, swoop down at train stations and other entry points
for sudden inspections. Drug addicts, political activists, gays and even
Ukrainian priests — all censured by either the government or the Russian Orthodox Church — are among the most obvious groups fearing life under a far less tolerant government.
In
fact, switching countries has brought disarray to virtually all aspects
of life. Crimeans find themselves needing new things every day —
driver’s licenses and license plates, insurance and prescriptions,
passports and school curriculums. The Russians who have flooded in
seeking land deals and other opportunities have been equally frustrated
by the logistical and bureaucratic roadblocks.
“The
radical reconstruction of everything is required, so these problems are
multiplying,” said Vladimir P. Kazarin, 66, a philology professor at
Taurida National University. (The university’s name, which derives from
Greek history, is scheduled to be changed.) “It will take two or three
years for all this chaos to be worked out, yet we have to keep on
living.”
On
a deeper level, some Crimeans struggle with fundamental questions about
their identity, a far more tangled process than merely changing
passports.
“I
cannot say to myself, ‘O.K., now I will stop loving Ukraine and I will
love Russia,’ ” said Natalia Ishchenko, another Taurida professor with
roots in both countries. “I feel like my heart is broken in two parts.
It is really difficult psychologically.”
The Crimean government dismisses any doubts or even complaints.
“Nonsense!”
said Yelena Yurchenko, the minister for tourism and resorts and the
daughter of a Soviet admiral who retired in Crimea. These “are small
issues that can be resolved as they appear,” she said, adding, “It might
result in certain tensions for the lazy people who do not want to make
progress.”
Legions
of Russian officials have descended on Crimea to teach the local people
how to become Russian. In tourism alone, Ms. Yurchenko said, Crimea
needed advice about Russian law, marketing, health care and news media.
“Can
you imagine how many people need to come to work here for just that one
sector?” she said in an interview, explaining why even her ministry
could not help anyone find a hotel room in Simferopol, the Crimean
capital. “We also have transportation, economy, construction, medicine,
culture and many other things.”
Other
changes in national identity elsewhere, like the “velvet divorce” of
the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, happened with more advance
planning. Crimeans feel as if they went through the entire reverse
process in 1991, when Ukraine left the Soviet Union, which had
transferred the peninsula to Ukraine from Russia in 1954. Confused? So
are they.
For Crimeans, every day overflows with uncertainty.
Food
imports, for example, have dwindled in the face of murky, slapdash
rules. The Crimean authorities recently banned cheese and pork from
Ukraine, then announced that full Russian border controls would be put
in effect on Friday. Shoppers are suddenly finding favorite brands of
ordinary items like yogurt unavailable.
Citing
logistical problems, McDonald’s closed. Metro, a giant German
supermarket chain, also shut down. Most multinational businesses want to
avoid possible sanctions elsewhere for operating in Crimea.
Flight connections have been severed except to Russia. Crimea officially moved an hour ahead to Moscow time, but cellphones automatically revert to Ukrainian time.
In
Dzhankoy, about 55 miles north of this capital city, Edward A.
Fyodorov, 37, has been selling ice cream since he was 9 years old. Those
sales eventually led to a fleet of 20 refrigerated trucks. He used to
import all manner of food from Ukraine, including frozen buns and salad
fixings for McDonald’s, plus various goods for Metro supermarkets and
300 smaller grocery stores.
Business
is off 90 percent, he said. Five to seven truckloads a day have
diminished to about one a week. He has been looking for Russian
suppliers, but products cost about 70 percent more and transportation
issues are thorny.
Crimea
lacks a land border with Russia, about 350 miles away through Ukraine.
The lone ferry crosses to Crimea from an obscure corner of the Caucasus.
An expensive bridge promised by the Kremlin is years away.
“It
is impossible to make any plans or forecasts,” said Mr. Fyodorov,
voicing an almost universal lament. Even if he found work, he said,
closed banks make payments impossible.
Long
lines snake outside the few Russian banks operating. (Some Crimeans
waiting in line resorted to a Soviet-era tactic of volunteering to
maintain epic lists — at one passport office the list stretched to more
than 12,000 names.) President Vladimir V. Putin announced Thursday that
he hoped to have Russian banks functioning normally in Crimea within a
month.
The
Kremlin, which has announced plans to make Crimea a gambling mecca, set
an official deadline of Jan. 1, 2015, for the transition. The initial
cost allocated to “all Crimean programs” this year will be $2.85
billion, Mr. Putin said, but given the promises the Kremlin has made
regarding infrastructure and doubled pensions, among other things, the
eventual annexation bill is expected to climb far beyond that.
Prices
are often quoted in both Ukrainian hryvnias and Russian rubles, but the
exchange rate fluctuates constantly. Even the simplest transactions,
like paying taxi fares, result in haggling by calculator.
Land
sales, despite surging demand from Russians wanting seaside dachas,
have stalled because land registration offices are closed.
Maxim
and Irina Nefeld, a young Moscow couple, had dreamed about living near
the sea for so long that they were on Crimea’s southern coast seeking
land on March 18, the day Mr. Putin announced the annexation.
They
found a pine-covered lot, a third of an acre with a sea view, for
$60,000. They agreed to buy it, but could not complete the deal without
the land office, or find a bank to transfer the money.
The
next day the owner asked for $70,000. Mr. Nefeld went back to Moscow to
get it in cash. When he returned on April 10, the landowner demanded
$100,000.
Russian
laws leave some groups out in the cold. Russia bans methadone to treat
heroin addiction, for example. As local supplies dwindle, the daily
dosage for 200 patients at the clinic here has been halved.
“It
is our death,” said Alexander, 40, declining to identify himself
publicly as a recovering addict. Unaware that methadone was illegal in
Russia, he voted for annexation.
Crimeans
are occasionally alarmed by armed men in uniforms without insignia who
materialize at places like Simferopol’s train station, inspecting
luggage and occasionally arresting passengers. Various people detained
in protests against the referendum a month ago have not resurfaced.
When confronted, the uniformed men tell Crimeans that they are “activists from the people” who are “preserving order.”
Archbishop
Kliment of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, vilified by its Russian
counterpart, said Russian priests with armed supporters had threatened
to confiscate churches in at least two villages. His 16 priests sent
their families and their most valuable icons to the Ukrainian mainland
for protection, he said.
Natalia
Rudenko, the founding principal of the capital’s one Ukrainian school,
said city officials fired her shortly after a member of the self-defense
forces visited, demanding to know why the school was still teaching
Ukrainian and not flying the Russian flag. Ms. Yurchenko, the tourism
minister, said the school could continue to teach Ukrainian, since the
new Constitution protected the language, but it would need to add
Russian classes.
It is hard to tally the many branches of government not functioning.
Court
cases have been frozen because the judges do not know what law to
apply. Essential procedures like DNA testing must now be done in Moscow
instead of Kiev.
One
traffic officer confessed he had no idea what law to enforce — he was
being sent to school two hours a day to learn Russian traffic laws.
Lawyers,
their previous education now irrelevant, plow through Russian legal
textbooks wrestling with the unfamiliar terms. “I won’t be able to
compete with young lawyers who come from Russia with diplomas in Russian
law,” said Olga Cherevkova, 25, who was previously pursing a Ph.D. in
Ukrainian health care law.
She is weighing whether to abandon the land of her birth, of her identity.
“Maybe
I should just pack my suitcase and move to Miami,” she said, laughing,
then caught herself. “I am laughing, but it is not really a joke. I want
to live in a free country. Still, for me as a lawyer, it is
interesting, if a bit strange.”
Correction: April 22, 2014
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the origin of the name of Taurida National University. It derives from Greek history, not Crimean Tatar history.
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the origin of the name of Taurida National University. It derives from Greek history, not Crimean Tatar history.
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