KIEV, Ukraine — Crimean voters gave overwhelming support Sunday to joining Russia and breaking away from Ukraine, the region's top referendum official announced.
With over 50% of the ballots counted shortly after polls closed, Mikhail Malishev, the head of the Crimea referendum committee, reported more than 95% of voters had chosen that the Black Sea peninsula secede from Ukraine and join Russia.
See also: Crimea Votes: The Day in Pictures
Pro-Kremlin Prime Minister Serhiy Aksyonov, who was voted into power in Crimea's parliament in February as armed men observed and whose authority the new Kiev government does not recognize, moved to push for a speedy entrance into the Russian Federation, announcing that a Crimean delegation would fly to Moscow on Monday morning to ask that lawmakers there bring the peninsula into its fold.
Sergei Mironov, leader of "A Just Russia Party," responded almost instantaneously, telling Channel One that the State Duma, the country's lower house of parliament, will quickly approve all laws on Crimea’s accession to Russia.
“We’ll approve all laws as soon as reasonably possible,” Mironov said. “All will happen strictly and quickly. Our Crimean brothers should not doubt."
Aksyonov also said Crimea will officially introduce the ruble as a second official currency along with Ukrainian hryvna, Russia's Interfax news agency reported. He said the dual currency will be in place for six months.
The outcome was hardly unexpected, and even before it was announced, the United States condemned the referendum, calling it unlawful. "Russia’s actions are dangerous and destabilizing," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
"In this century, we are long past the days when the international community will stand quietly by while one country forcibly seizes the territory of another," Carney said in a statement. "We call on all members of the international community to continue to condemn such actions, to take concrete steps to impose costs, and to stand together in support of the Ukrainian people and Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty."
Ukraine's new government in Kiev has also denounced the vote. Acting Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia said on Saturday that the interim government remained steadfast in its position that the Crimean referendum is illegitimate and unconstitutional. Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov and interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk have said Kiev and the international community will not recognize the results.
Meanwhile, in Crimea's capital, Simferopol, pro-Russia Crimeans filled Lenin Square to celebrate the referendum results. And officials defended the referendum against accusations from the West. “We have an absolutely legitimate referendum," said Crimean Parliament speaker Vladimir Konstantinov. "I have never seen more legitimate event."
http://t.co/x5Ni9Nm1Yt толпа в Симферополе празднует итоги референдума о присоединении Крыма к России pic.twitter.com/oCpTgKRsxY
— Feldman (@EvgenyFeldman) March 16, 2014
The voting began Sunday under dark clouds and heavy rains. As residents cast their ballots, thousands of heavily armed Russian soldiers and several Kalashnikov-wielding pro-Russian militia units kept watch.
Once inside the hastily constructed voting booths, Crimean voters had just two options: “Do you support joining Crimea with the Russian Federation as a subject of Russian Federation?” Or, “Do you support restoration of 1992 Crimean Constitution and Crimea's status as a part of Ukraine?”

A woman votes in the Crimean city of Bakhchysaray, where many of the region's ethnic Muslim Tatars live.
Image: Mashable, Evgeny Feldman
By choosing the first option, Crimea voters have effectively validated an earlier vote by the Crimean parliament to secede from Ukraine and pave the road for it to formally appeal to Russia to annex it, making it a “federal subject” of the Russian Federation. The Russia State Duma has said it is prepared to discuss this option on March 21.
The peninsula has an electorate of more than 1.5 million, many of whom are ethnic Russians and were expected to vote for secession. Minority ethnic Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar populations had said they would boycott Sunday’s vote.
The vote was set in motion less than three weeks ago, when Russian soldiers swarmed the Black Sea peninsula, which dangles like a pendant from southern Ukraine, and effectively seized control in late February, mere days after Ukraine’s new government voted to impeach its pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. He turned up in Russia later, after hastily fleeing his palatial estate outside Kiev known as Mezhyhirya.
Since then, blue and yellow Ukrainian flags have been replaced with white, blue and red Russian ones at government buildings in Crimea, and rallies and concerts have been held in the region’s capital of Simferopol, as well as the staunchly pro-Russian seaside city of Sevastopol, in support of the region returning to its “motherland.”
Crimea was a part of Russia until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave the region to Soviet Ukraine in 1954.
The West has supported the interim Ukrainian government over the course of the past weeks, during which time U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held exhaustive talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that have thus far failed to find a diplomatic solution on the issue. German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Moscow that it risked “massive” political and economic damage if it refused to change course regarding Ukraine.
Several European countries, along with the U.S., have already imposed sanctions against members of Ukraine’s former government who are believed to have played a role in the killings of some 100 people, which include protesters and police, during violent clashes in Kiev in recent months. They say they are now preparing to do the same to top Russian officials should the Kremlin not back down in Crimea and the annexation of it goes through.
Moscow has publicly supported the Crimean referendum but categorically denied direct involvement there, saying the armed men in nondescript military uniforms are not Russian troops, but local pro-Russian militia units.
Its Foreign Ministry, however, has justified potential action in Ukraine, saying that it reserves the right to intervene in order to protect the large ethnic Russian populations in Crimea and the eastern regions of the country’s mainland from radical “fascists,” “nationalists” and “extremists” who have seized power in Kiev through a coup d’état and are spreading unrest.
The ominous threat has many here worried that Russia will invade the eastern cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk, like it has done in Crimea, and move to annex them.
"The situation is very dangerous. I'm not exaggerating,” Turchynov, the country’s interim president, told parliament on Saturday. "There is a real danger from threats of invasion of Ukrainian territory."
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Christopher J. Miller is an editor at English-language newspaper the Kyiv Post in Ukraine.