Crimea is seeking to join Russia rather than win independence like in the case of Abkhazia, Crimean Prime Minister Sergey Aksenov said Friday even as it was announced that some 50 foreigners from 21 countries will be present as international observers during Sunday's referendum.
"Personally I believe that Crimea should enter as a subject to the Russian Federation," Aksenov said at a press briefing.
"We will not have independence," he said through an interpreter.
When asked how long it would take for Crimea to complete the transition period, Aksenov said that it would take up to a year to join Russia.
He said that there had been Russian military presence in the peninsula but they had not conducted active operations.
"The Russian troops are always here, from the times of (Alexander) Suvorov and (Mikhail) Kutuzov," he said.
"The Black Sea Fleet never went away since the independence of Ukraine," Aksenov said.
But he said that public order in Crimea had been maintained by local self-defence, law enforcement and security service units.
"For a couple of critical infrastructures, there had been coordination with the Black Sea Fleet and nothing more than that," said Aksenov.
Crimea, a Ukrainian autonomous republic, will hold a referendum Sunday on whether to join Russia or remain part of Ukraine as an autonomous republic. Russia has said it would respect the decision while the seven major Western countries said they would reject it.
Some 50 foreigners from 21 countries will be present during the referendum, the chief of Crimea's commission on preparing and holding the all-Crimean referendum said Friday.
At a briefing, Mikhail Malyshev said these observers who came from, among others, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Spain and the US, had been registered by his commission.
The commission chief told reporters that some 1.52 million Crimeans are eligible for the referendum, of which the first provisional result would come out Monday. Ballot papers have already been distributed to 27 sub-commissions on the peninsula.
Voters will have two options: to unite with Russia or remain in Ukraine with increased autonomy.
Also Friday, the Russian foreign ministry said Moscow was disappointed with the statement of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) over the upcoming referendum in Crimea.
“In its current form the referendum regarding Crimea scheduled for March 16, 2014, is in contradiction with the Ukrainian Constitution and must be considered illegal," the OSCE website quoted its Chairman-in-Office Didier Burkhalter as saying Tuesday.
Moscow insisted that it considered the Sunday referendum completely legal, citing the Helsinki Act of 1975 which guarantees the right for all nations to decide freely their internal and external political status.
It also expressed regret that the Swiss chairmanship of the OSCE had turned a blind eye to the "anti-constitutional coup" in Ukraine and to the legitimacy of the new regime in Kiev.
"We hope the chairmanship's possible assessments of these issues will take the Russian point of view into account," the ministry said.
Meanwhile, a UN envoy said in Kiev Friday that he has not seen any evidence of human rights violations in Ukraine that required military intervention.
"In Ukraine, there is no widespread human rights violation which requires military actions," Xinhua quoted Ivan Simonovic, UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, as saying.
There were cases of illegal arrests and harassment in Ukraine's autonomous republic of Crimea, which became the epicentre of ongoing tension in the East European country, said Simonovic, who is currently in this country to evaluate the human rights situation.
The unmarked armed groups of people, who are "not natives of the Crimean region", are concentrated in the Black Sea peninsula, the envoy said, without giving further details.
Simonovic came to Ukraine last week on the instructions of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to assess the human rights situation in the region. During his stay in Ukraine, Simonovic held meetings with the local authorities, as well as with representative of pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian civil movements.
The UN human rights mission is expected to stay in Ukraine till March 18.
