Russian polls: Crimean tatars call to boycott the vote Two-and-a-half years after Moscow annexed the strategic peninsula from Ukraine, residents are gearing up to vote Sunday in their first polls to elect deputies to Russia's national parliament. Since seizing control, the authorities have harshly suppressed the Crimean Tatar indigenous Muslim group that largely opposed Moscow's takeover. Leaders of the community, who make up some 14 percent of its population, have called for a boycott of the polls. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES.