This above all is extremely embarrassing.voter turnout (79.09%) that exceeded every US Presidential election since 1900
meh, you'd see a big turnout here too if we held a poll of "JOIN CANADA? (Y/N)" a better comparison would be their typical election turnout prior to the orange revolution edit: okay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_presidential_election,_1999 says 70% yep
http://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/03/17/7019270/ Ukrainian News report places like Sevastopol have a 123% turnout. I'm a bit skeptical of ANY numbers circulating right now... It's just a big mess.
I'm in Poland but there are lots of Ukrainians here. I might be getting the wrong impression because i'm talking mostly to young people but it looks to me that the russian-speaking part of Ukraine is not as pro-russian as the media is portraying it. Most people i've talked to so far say things along the lines of "My first language is russian but i'm ukrainian. We have our own identity and even if the country is in a shitty situation, no way we would like to be annexed to russia". When I asked my friend about Crimea, he said he's been there in 2010 and locals he was talking to were complaining that russia was giving out fake russian passports and pushing for a pro-russian view. On top of that, Crimea still has a Tatar population and ethnic Ukrainians that are definitely not pro-russian. It's hard for me to believe that Crimea wants to separate when everyone I talk to tells me the contrary. I'd like to know what the numbers actually are, but I would guess it's probably split around 50/50.