Eight months after Russia annexed

Crimea from Ukraine, a complicated

transition

Alexander Burtsev, an ethnic Russian and head of a childrens art school in Sevastopol,
looks at a students painting of a pro-Russian support meeting. (Dmitry Beliakov/For The
Washington Post)

By Michael Birnbaum November 27 at 4:28 PM

SIMFEROPOL, Crimea Eight months into the Russian

annexation of the Black Sea resort region of Crimea, traces of Ukraines 60-year
rule here are rapidly being wiped away. Now Ukrainians themselves worry that they
are next.

The Ukrainian language has vanished from school curriculums, Russias twoheaded eagle has been bolted onto government buildings, and Russian laws are
slowly taking hold. And as the peninsula Russifies, Ukrainians and other minority
groups are finding that an area once renowned for its easygoing cosmopolitanism is
now stifling. Some are fleeing their native home.
Many complain that they have been written off both by the world and by Ukraine
itself, which is focused on the bloody conflict in its southeast. The turmoil is a harsh
consequence of the first major land grab in Europe since World War II and it
comes despite Kremlin assurances that life would be better in Crimea for Russians
and Ukrainians alike.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has quickly become a haven for Ukrainian
speakers in Crimea, who can gather on Sunday mornings to gossip and to send up
prayers in sanctuaries whose authorities sit in Kiev, not Moscow. But Archbishop
Kliment, the leader of the church here, fears for his future.
I get up worried, and I go to bed worried, he said, speaking in the converted

school building in Simferopol that houses the church headquarters on this

peninsula of 2.4 million. They are closing down Ukrainian schools, Ukrainian
newspapers. Its all closed, and the Ukrainian church is the only thing left. One
poll taken when Crimea was still part of Ukraine found that about 12 percent of
Crimean residents, or 280,000 people, identified as Ukrainian Orthodox.

Father Maxim in the cathedral of Vladimir and Olga

near Simferopol. The future of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church appears to rest on whether it is
allowed to register in Russia, an unclear prospect. (Dmitry Beliakov/For The Washington Post)

Since the Russian takeover, the church

leader says, pressure has forced him to close almost a third of his congregations.
Several of his priests have fled.
Archbishop Kliment finds himself a world away from the heady days he spent in
Kiev in February, when he announced onstage to a crowd of battle-scarred
protesters that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which broke away from Russian
Orthodoxy after the fall of the Soviet Union, had withdrawn its support for thenPresident Viktor Yanukovych. That provoked cheers from the crowd. Within days,
Yanukovych was toppled and Russia was moving in on Crimea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was acting to defend the rights of ethnic
Russians, although the risks they purportedly faced appeared to be almost
exclusively voiced within broadcasts by state-run Russian media. President Obama
called the Russian annexation illegitimate.
Many ethnic Russians were excited to join a richer nation that promised them a
higher standard of living. In a March referendum, 97.6 percent were said to have
voted to join Russia. Critics questioned the validity of the results, and opponents
largely boycotted the voting. Now they say that an entire constellation of life is

swiftly fading away.

Some say they have no future in Crimea. Darya Karpenko emptied her Simferopol
apartment and sold her Nissan this month, setting out last week with her 2-year-old
daughter to join her husband in the Polish city of Krakow. Even though she is
ethnically Russian, she said there is no future for her family in the city where she
was born.
I feel almost like Im jumping on the last train car thats leaving, Karpenko said,

shortly before she left for Poland. We never planned our lives to leave. We bought
a very nice apartment. We renovated it. We filled it with expensive furniture. We
lost everything here. My husband works in IT. There were 50 small companies in
the city, and theyre all closed now.
Before the Russian annexation, Karpenko ran a popular blog and was a business
consultant in Ukraine. Since the takeover, she said, she posts cautiously on her
Facebook page, worrying constantly about Russian security services.
Im expecting security services to come for me any time there is a spirited

conversation in the comments section of her Facebook profile, she said. Because
security services do visit people. Its not an old wives tale. Some of her friends
were questioned when they criticized the annexation, she said.
At least 25 of her friends and acquaintances have left, Karpenko said, leaving no
one to talk to who sympathizes with her position in her final days in Crimea.
People are leaving every day, she said. These are very intelligent people, the

middle class, very well educated.

Many Crimean residents, even those supportive of the Russian takeover, have
found themselves stuck in a strange hinterland between nations.

Ukrainian cellphone networks have pulled out, and suddenly friends and family in
Ukraine are an expensive international phone call away. Businesses must follow
new laws. Crimeas new Moscow-backed authorities shut down the branches of
several Ukrainian banks, and the others departed, leaving many peoples life
savings in limbo.
Ukrainian authorities have been reluctant to unlock money for new Russian banks
that they say are part of an illegal occupation. Tourism, once a mainstay of the
economy, has lagged as international tourists kept away this year. And agriculture
suffered when Ukraine cut back the amount of water it sends to Crimea via a canal.
Life could become even more complicated in the coming months. Russia will
require that residents have Russian passports to qualify for health care, which will
force some of the last holdouts either to give up their Ukrainian passports or to
leave the peninsula. Ukraine, meanwhile, is imposing restrictions on the amount of
cash that Crimean residents can carry across the border.
But many Crimeans are happy to be part of Russia, even if the initial euphoria has
dissipated. Some welcome once again being part of a Russian nation to which they
always felt connected. Others hold out hope for new economic opportunities. Many
say that if it werent for Russias intervention, they would have had the same
bloody experience as eastern Ukraine although that conflict was sparked by proRussian separatists seizing local government buildings, not by the central
government in Kiev.
We felt we had been in internal immigration. I am a Russian person, said

Alexander Burtsev, the director of a childrens art school in Sevastopol, the port city
that is home to Russias Black Sea Fleet. Our lives have become better, he said.
Financially better and morally better. Especially morally.

Local authorities have promised him a new building for his art school, whose
students learn painting and sculpture on rickety Soviet-era wooden stools.
Those who complain about the transition period, Burtsev said, are simply being
impatient. Times arent easy, because were switching from Ukraine to Russian
legislation, he said. But its a temporary problem.
Authorities say they will smooth out the bumps that have accompanied the
peninsulas switch to Russian rule. They say that there is room for minorities to live
in Crimea so long as they live within Russian laws.
Ukraine has been an angry stepmother for Crimea, Crimean Prime Minister

Sergei Aksyonov, the top Russian official in Crimea, said in written replies to
questions. To make Crimea self-sufficient is our strategic aim. We plan to reach
this goal in five years, and Moscow has pledged $15.5 billion to that end, he said.
As for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, he said that no other churches recognize it.
Its future appears to rest on whether it is allowed to register in Russia, an unclear
prospect.
Archbishop Kliment says he will fight as long as he can. Until the last Ukrainian
leaves Crimea, he said, we need to be here with them.

Michael Birnbaum is The Posts Moscow bureau chief. He

previously served as the Berlin correspondent and an education reporter.
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