It was grim and rainy last Friday along Crimea’s Black Sea coast, and Dimitri Semenov was in a dark mood. A former Soviet Army officer and a successful businessman, Semenov is used to taking risks: he goes deep-water diving for fun. These days, though, all he talks about are his worries.

“To be honest, I worry about everything,” Semenov said, as we drove around his home town of Saky, about thirty miles northwest of Simferopol, the Crimean capital, in his Toyota S.U.V. “I even worry about who is going to feed my dog if I have to leave.” An ethnic Russian, born and raised in Crimea, Semenov told me that he had never thought of leaving before. But, since Russian troops took over Crimea, in late February, and the peninsula’s government announced its decision to join the Russian Federation, Semenov has found himself in the small minority of Russians in Crimea who oppose a merger with Moscow. (Nearly sixty per cent of the peninsula’s population is Russian, according to the 2001 census; twenty-five per cent are Ukrainian, and another twelve per cent are Crimean Tatars.) His own family, like many here, has been split by the crisis: one of his two brothers supports the Kremlin; the other agrees with Dimitri that Crimea will be much better off as a part of Ukraine.

Semenov, whose firm produces food and beverage containers that are exported to Europe and Israel, said that the crisis had already damaged business; his factory had come to a halt because employees couldn’t get to work, and the presence of Russian troops was interfering with foreign trade. He supported the protests in Kiev, he told me, because he thought they represented the only alternative to the corrupt rule of Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted Ukrainian President. “The Orange Revolution failed us,” he said, referring to the disappointing aftermath of the 2004 uprising, “but this was another chance. Now that, too, is gone.”

This weekend, the people of Crimea will vote in a hastily arranged referendum that both the government in Kiev and the international community have deemed illegitimate. It offers two choices: to endorse the decision, already made by the regional parliament, to join the Russian Federation; or to restore the 1992 Crimean constitution that described the peninsula as a “Soviet State” and gave its leaders considerable autonomy from Kiev—which, given Crimea’s pro-Moscow government and the presence of Russian troops, would effectively produce the same result.

“Either way, Putin has got us,” Semenov said. “I am not sure what I dread more: going to Russia or going back to the 1992 constitution.” In Saky, where the beach is lined with grey concrete Soviet-era resorts, bad memories of the nineteen-nineties still resonate. Hundreds of Soviet veterans of the Afghan war came to the town in the late eighties, for treatment at the many sanatoriums situated along the Black Sea. Afterward, many of them remained in Saky and joined local gangs, bringing with them military training and combat experience. Within a few years, after the fall of the Soviet Union, organized criminal groups in the area were locked in fierce battles to control former state resources, grabbing buildings and land. Residents of the once-sleepy town found themselves in the middle of a violent struggle between two of Crimea’s biggest gangs, known as Bashmaki and Salem.

“We lived in a war zone,” Semenov recalled. “Not a day would go by without a shooting, or someone dying.” The gangs, he said, “would rape girls they liked and kill guys they didn’t like. And now we have one of them in charge here.”

Crimea’s new, Moscow-backed Prime Minister, Sergei Aksyonov, denies that he had any link to organized crime in those days, but several reports have alleged that he was a member of Salem, and many people in Crimea still know him by his old nickname, the Goblin. Prior to Russia’s march on the peninsula, last week, Aksyonov, who entered politics in the nineties, was a marginal figure. His pro-Moscow party, called Russian Unity, won only four per cent of the vote in the region’s last election, in 2010—a sign, many analysts concluded, that, while most Crimeans identified with Russia, few actually wanted to join it.

The revolution in Kiev—along with a lot of encouragement from Moscow—seems to have changed that equation. Most Crimeans regarded the protests on Kiev’s Maidan as nothing more than a gathering of dangerous Ukrainian nationalists, a perception that was amplified by the Kremlin-controlled Russian television channels that dominate the local media. Under the Putinesque pretext that Crimea had to be protected from “fascist forces,” Aksyonov’s government announced that Crimea would become a part of Russia, and declared that the only occupying force on the peninsula was the Ukrainian Army.

Among the busy stalls of Simferopol’s main market, most of the people I spoke to agreed with Aksyonov. “Putin is our savior,” a vegetable seller named Nadezhda told me. “We have so many economic problems here, but Putin will sort it all out.” At the next stall, another woman continued making the case: “It’s simple. Russia is powerful and prosperous, and it will protect us from all the Nazis and fascists who have taken over Ukraine.” Both women told me that they will vote to join Russia in this weekend’s referendum.

While the new Crimean government rushes into Moscow’s embrace, Semenov and a number of other skeptics wonder about the logistics of a swift and unprecedented transfer of territory from one state to another. Crimea is dependent on Kiev for most of its electricity, water, and communications infrastructure. The peninsula’s highways and roads all lead to Ukraine, which is also the source of most of its tourism and trade.

So far, no one in Crimea’s government has explained how the annexation will actually proceed. One mid-level municipal official in Simferopol, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that there is no plan. “To be honest, we don’t really know how it will work,” he said. “We haven’t figured out yet how the banking system will change or how bills and pensions will be paid. There is a lot that needs to be sorted.”

Ukraine cannot afford a military confrontation with Russia, as the acting Ukrainian President, Oleksandr Turchynov, underscored in an interview on Wednesday, telling a reporter, “We cannot launch a military operation in Crimea, as we would expose the eastern border [with Russia] and Ukraine would not be protected.” But Ukraine does have a great deal of economic leverage over the peninsula. The new Crimean government may be banking on the hope that Ukraine is unlikely to isolate Crimea because an economic blockade of the peninsula could backfire politically. “If Kiev doesn’t recognize Crimea’s independence, it will have an obligation to continue supporting its people,” Ildar Gazizullin, an economist at the International Center for Perspective Research, in Kiev, said. “Starving the Crimeans will only convince them that they made the right choice by going to Russia. I don’t think it will happen.”

Alexander Furmanchuk, a political analyst in Simferopol, argued that Crimea will thrive after severing itself from Ukraine. “Putin would not have gone as far as he did if he couldn’t afford to go to the end and if he didn’t have a plan,” he said. “We will prosper within two years. We will have an investment boom here, roads will be built, our resorts will be full of Russian tourists.”

Back in Saky, Semenov predicted a far darker future: a dead tourism industry, empty beaches, and a return to the volatile and lawless early nineteen-nineties. “For Putin, this isn’t about Crimea,” he said. “It’s not even about Ukraine. This is about Russia: he wants to show his own people that the price for a revolt is instability and chaos.”

As we drove through a curtain of rain, Semenov’s mood became more gloomy and his voice grew increasingly distraught, until he abruptly pulled over to the side of the road and turned to face me directly. “The worst thing is that, for me, as a Russian, this is the end of my hopes and dreams for Russia itself,” he said. “If we, Russians, let him win here, he will win in proving that we are nothing but zombies, a bunch of sheep who follow without questioning.” And then, before he finished his thought, Semenov buried his head in his big hands and broke into tears.

Above: A mural in Simferopol on Wednesday. Photograph by Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty.