SIMFEROPOL, CRIMEA — Reminders of Crimea's Sunday referendum vote are everywhere around the peninsula's capital city, Simferopol. But most of the signs and banners reminding Crimeans to vote also advise the peninsula's residents to cast their ballots in favor of unification with Russia. The other option, to gain greater autonomy within Ukraine, is barely discussed.
Ukraine's new government in Kiev has denounced the referendum as illegitimate and both the United States and the European Union have backed up Kiev's position on this Sunday's vote. However, Crimea's pro-Russian legislative body has decided to go ahead with the vote with backing from the Kremlin.
Russia vetoed on Saturday a draft United Nations resolution criticizing the referendum. China abstained from the vote, while the other members of the security council for the measure.
On Saturday, the day before the referendum, Simferopol's central square was filled with the booming noise of loudspeakers blasting a pro-Russian program of entertainment, ranging from traditional folk music to heavy Russian nationalist rock. Across from the main stage, groups of Russian Cossacks stood on guard around a Crimean government building, just in case. A Lenin statue was located in the middle of the square, with coronations lain at the statue's base and a sign that read: "Don't touch our leader."
"The West just doesn't understand what the people of Crimea want," said Rita Avramenko earnestly. The eighteen-year old had stood on the square for about three hours with a Crimean flag in her hand, watching the programming.
"We're Russian," she said, adding that the EuroMaidan protests in Kiev have made it even more obvious that Crimeans belong to Russia and not with Ukraine.
However, for some Crimeans, the question of the referendum isn't about cultural alignment as much as it is about what they say are better financial prospects in Russia.
Outside the Crimean Parliament building, which is also guarded by Cossacks, four fliers have been affixed to stone steps up to the building. The papers compare salaries and pensions in Crimea and Russia, the cost of fuel in Ukraine and Russia, the two countries’ medical services and educational systems.
Nadezda Telichko was looking over the fliers on Friday evening. The sixty-three-year old said she is still working doing small home repairs because she couldn't live on the pension she would receive if she retired: 1,300 hryvnias ($134) a month. .
Though she considers herself a proud ethnic Ukrainian, she said she'd had enough with Ukraine and was going to vote for unification with Russia this Sunday.

A man in his mid-twenties who was also looking the paper pointed out that there were no guarantees that pensions would increase if Crimea became part of Russia. He also tried to reason with Telichko that the cost of living would go up with Russian unification.
Telichko shook her head and the young man gave up explaining and walked away.
"Nothing could get worse than the present," Telichko said.
However, a group of pro-Ukrainian protesters on the edge of Simferopol was preparing just for that.
Andrey Sichkachenko, an eighteen-year old university student, had appeared regularly at pro-Ukrainian rallies in Simferopol for the past few months.
Wrapped in a Ukrainian flag, Sichkachenko said he plans to take a train out of Simferopol to Kiev tomorrow and wait for the situation to quiet down. There was no point in participating in a referendum that was fixed from the start, Sichkachenko said.

During the pro-Ukrainian rally of about 150 people, different speakers took the megaphone in the center of the crowd, telling those in attendance to boycott the elections.
"It's not our referendum," said Leonid Kuzmin, 24, a professor at a technical university in Simferopol. There's no way that the outcome of tomorrow's vote will be good for Crimea, he said.
In Moscow, tens of thousands of people turned out to protest the Russian incursion in Ukraine, according to the BBC.
Crimeans who support the new government in Kiev are bracing for the fallout from Sunday's referendum, rather than looking forward to its outcome.

Groups of Crimean Tatars have been patrolling around neighborhoods with large Tatar populations during the night to make sure their communities stay safe.

On Friday around midnight, groups of Tatars in the Fontan region of Simferopol stood in clusters of about ten people at designated street intersections to make sure that suspicious cars drove through.

"There hasn't been a worse time that I remember," said Naryman, a twenty-five-year old who organized one of the intersection check-points. The Tatars, who generally align politically with Kiev, are worried that pro-Russian supporters venture out into neighborhoods where Tatars live in search of confrontation.

The night watchers are there just in case, Naryman said. (Naryman refused to give his last name because of safety concerns).
Katherine Jacobsen is a Kiev-based freelance journalist. Before she bought a one-way ticket east, she was with The Christian Science Monitor in Boston covering tech stories and national news. Katherine has a Master's degree from Columbia's School of ...More