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Press TV has conducted an interview with Dmitry Babich, with the Voice of Russia Radio Station from Moscow, about Russia calling on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to send observers to monitor the upcoming secession referendum in Ukraine’s Crimea region.

- Moscow is calling on the OSCE to send observers to oversee this vote. First of all your opinion just ahead of the vote, do you think that we are going to see a reasonable poll being held amid security and that the results of that vote is going to be joining Russia?

- Well I am sure that the majority of people in Crimea want to join Russia and I think even their opponents understand that they do not have the majority in Crimea.

And this is not Russia’s fault that events have taken such a turn. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian leadership has lost Crimea. You know history. Crimea is a Russian region that was [locked] together with what was then Soviet Ukraine in 1954 by the then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. People there felt themselves Russians, they still feel themselves Russians. If the Ukrainian government, if the new Ukrainian state which became independent in 1991, if it had treated them right, they would never want to leave Ukraine.

But unfortunately now that this coup d'état took place in Kiev and we have some Ukrainian nationalists in power, people in Crimea want to join Russia. There is no doubt that they will vote for joining Russia and there is no doubt that Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)will not consider this vote legitimate.

We understand why that will happen because the United States and the European Union have predominant influence in OSCE but that vote changed the reality. The reality is that Crimea does not want to be part of Ukraine. Crimean does not want to be Ukrainian.

The same situation we have in Abkhazia which does not want to be a part of Georgia.

The West may not recognize it. The West might say that this is illegitimate but the West cannot change the reality on the ground. It cannot change people’s wishes.

- Well you know the new Ukrainian government has said that when it comes to its territorial integrity and sovereignty, it is going to do whatever it can under any conditions to preserve the country’s national integrity.

So do you think with the fact that they have called this vote illegitimate, when the results are announced they will just simply allow this secession to happen?

- Well I am sure that the Ukrainian government will make all sorts of statements. Of course it will not recognize this vote but if this government had been in deep concern about Ukraine’s integrity, it would not repeal the law given that Russian language, the state of sovereign regional language in Ukraine. It would not do a lot of other things which are viewed by the Russian population of Ukraine as discriminatory against them. 

So militarily Ukraine cannot defend itself. It is simply no match to Russia and the vast majority of Ukrainians and Russians cannot imagine each other, you know, fighting between themselves.

So the Ukrainian government will not recognize this vote but this will not change the reality. Ukraine already lost Crimea and it lost it not at the battlefield. There was no fighting, not a single person was killed or injured in Crimea. It was Crimea economically, politically and culturally discrimination against the Russian language made Crimea anti-Ukrainia.