«I cannot fly to Crimea because my account is blocked, not only mine but also all my relatives'. Everyone, even my mother,» says Tsytovich with notes of despair in his voice. He approached the newspaper's editorial office on his own initiative, leaving his Thai phone number for contact. The man watched the political confrontation between Moscow and Kyiv from afar. He, like many ordinary people on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border, did not expect such a rapid turn of events around his native peninsula.
On the day of the referendum on the annexation of Crimea to Russia, it turned out that Tsytovich's bank card with his personal funds was blocked, and his relatives could not make a money transfer for the same reason. Having exhausted all ways to resolve the matter with the bank, the Crimean with Ukrainian citizenship first turned to the Russian consulate for help.
«I could, of course, have turned to the Ukrainian one, but in fact Crimea is controlled by Russia,» Tsytovich explains his situation. At the Russian embassy, they replied «in a rude manner» that they could not help. Then the man called the Russian Foreign Ministry's information line. There, they advised him to find a job.
«This man has already called us. Nobody here deals with these issues. He must earn money! Russia is not going to send a plane for him!» an angry employee of the diplomatic department confirmed the Crimean's words to a correspondent of Gazeta.Ru.
Alexander Mrykin, the press attaché of the Russian embassy in Thailand, was much more restrained and expressed understanding of the difficult situation, but struggled to explain how Russia could help its potential citizen in such a situation. «We have not yet received any instructions on how to act in such situations. If such appeals come in, we will ask the Foreign Ministry for clarification so they give us clear instructions,» Mrykin explained. «You understand, we cannot take the initiative in such situations. The annexation of Crimea to Russia happened relatively recently; objectively, such situations will arise for some time. For now, I don't even know how we can help such citizens.»
Such people as Tsytovich, according to the diplomat, are not yet citizens of Russia, and there are no formal grounds to help them. «If he were in Crimea and had received a Russian passport there, then appropriate help would have been provided,» Mrykin suggested.
The Ukrainian diplomatic mission also rejected their citizen's request for help. Consulate employees simply explained to him that it could not be that the country's largest bank, PrivatBank, did not service the accounts of Crimea residents, which, according to the diplomats, remains part of Ukraine. «There is, of course, such a moment that when you say, 'I'm from Crimea,' you feel the attitude: 'Ah, from Crimea, well, you deal with Putin yourselves,'» Tsytovich clarifies. «It's very hard for me now: I'm not yet a Russian citizen, I'm a Ukrainian citizen, but there the belonging of Crimea is only declared, but in fact they have already recognized it as foreign territory.»
Employees of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's hotline redirected all questions from the correspondent to the National Bank, which controls the country's credit institutions. It was not possible to reach the press service of the National Bank on Monday.
More details about the situation were provided by PrivatBank. They confirmed that all bank clients' accounts in Crimea are frozen. This is explained by the lack of legal documents regulating the work of credit institutions on the peninsula.
«What is happening with banks in Crimea? Nothing is happening, in the literal sense. The banking system is virtually absent,» said a PrivatBank press service employee. «There are a huge number of statements, but not a single document that would define the work of banks.»
Meanwhile, the number of the bank's clients in Crimea is estimated at 790 thousand individuals and 12 thousand corporate clients—almost half of the republic's residents. In a statement on the official website of PrivatBank, it is noted that the credit institution is temporarily suspending operations of its branches and transactions with client accounts due to the uncertainty of the legal status of the peninsula's banking system. «As of today, legally, branches of Ukrainian banks cannot operate on foreign territories, which the Russian Federation has declared the Republic of Crimea to be,» the statement says.
Tsytovich also does not know how to behave «in the new conditions.» «Here I am studying. I have a student visa,» he says. By education, the Crimean is a psychologist specializing in the rehabilitation of drug addicts. In Crimea, he earned money through diving. After selling property, he decided to leave for Thailand for a while. Now he doubts whether he should return to his old new homeland.
According to the federal constitutional law signed on March 21 by Vladimir Putin on the admission of a new region into the Russian Federation, all «citizens of Ukraine and stateless persons permanently residing in the territory of the Republic of Crimea» become citizens of the Russian Federation. The exception is those who, within one month after the signing of the document, «declare their desire to retain their existing and (or) their minor children's other citizenship or to remain stateless persons.»
For Tsytovich to make a final decision on citizenship, he first needs to get to Crimea. «I was initially against it, but my family was for it,» he reflects on the annexation of Crimea to Russia. «My brother works in the police, took part in the events in Kyiv. He is going to serve in the police. I look at it a little differently. The year 2017 turned out like that, you know? Seven generations of my family have lived in Crimea, starting with the Greeks. My father was nominated for the Debut Booker Prize. I am a true Crimean and perceive what is happening very painfully.»
In 2005, when all this "Orange Revolution" began, I came to the Russian consulate in Simferopol and asked for citizenship. My father is Russian, my mother is Russian, and I was born, as it happened, on the territory of the Russian Federation, but I was refused. They said that to get a Russian passport, I had to live in Russia for five years. They would give me citizenship on a general basis, like to Uzbeks. I found that insulting. I never heard of a German going to the German embassy and being refused like that. And now, when we became needed, they came and "liberated us from the Bandera followers."