On March 16, 2014, ten years ago, Vladimir Putin orchestrated a swift annexation referendum to Russia on the Crimean peninsula, which he had invaded without violence the previous month, taking advantage of the moment of political instability in Ukraine. In February, the pro-Russian Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, had fled before the pro-European movement of Euromaidan, the opposition was reorganizing and, in the wake of this power vacuum, the illegal referendum – carried out without democratic guarantees – produced an overwhelming result: the 96.77% of voters said yes to the incorporation of Crimea into Russia.
The Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea, boycotted the referendum, knowing that nothing good could come from Moscow after the suffering suffered first under Tsarist Russia and then under the Soviet Union. In 1944, Josef Stalin ordered their deportation to Central Asia, accusing them of collaborating with Nazi Germany, which had occupied the peninsula for two years. More than 200,000 people – most of them women, children and the elderly, as the men fought in the Red Army – were forced to undertake that forced train journey, and thousands died, a collective debacle that remains in Tatar memory.
“My grandmother told us how terrible it was: they were put in cattle cars, standing for three weeks and without toilets, and many died from drowning or from hunger and thirst,” explains the Tatar author Elnara Nuriieva-Letova in Berlin, who lives in Germany since September 2019. “In all nations there were some collaborationists, but the entire nation cannot be blamed; “My grandmother’s brother died as a Red Army soldier and many Tatars were decorated, but the Soviets accused the entire nation, and the Russian narrative continues to present the Tatars as traitors,” continues Nuriieva-Letova, born in 1989 in Tajikistan due to to deportation.
With the independence of Ukraine in 1991, the descendants of those deported began to return to Crimea – Elnara’s family returned in 1992, when she was three years old – and to remake the Tatar community. Before the Russian annexation in 2014, there were 282,000 people and they constituted around 12% of the population. Between 35,000 and 45,000 left for other areas of Ukraine after the annexation, according to community estimates. Despite being a minority among the population of Ukrainian or Russian origin, Tatars make up two-thirds of all political prisoners in Crimea, according to the newspaper The Kyiv Independent, which estimates that 202 Tatars have been imprisoned or persecuted, some with sentences of 20 years in prison. prison.
“The large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought with it more repressive and discriminatory attitudes from the occupying Russian authority towards the Crimean Tatars,” the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner warned a year ago. Waves of mass arrests, searches and raids on homes, businesses and gathering places in Crimea, which disproportionately affected Crimean Tatars in the past, have continued, often accompanied by accusations of extremism or terrorism following attacks by unidentified individuals. to military targets in Crimea.”
In 2014, Elnara Nuriieva-Letova left Crimea for Kyiv. At first, she visited her family in Bakhchisarai, the main Tatar city. “I went for the last time in 2021, already living in Germany; The atmosphere was so oppressive that I have decided that I will not go to Crimea until it is liberated, although my mother is there, my sister, my nephews, my childhood friends… On a superficial level, Russia invests a lot of money in Crimea; everything looks beautiful and shiny. But it is artificial well-being, because you cannot speak freely; Every time I said something, my mother and my friends told me, be careful, someone may hear and report you to the police. Tatars are imprisoned for anything; just because of their ethnic origin.”
The Tatars, of Mongolian and Turkish origin, a Muslim religion and their own language in danger of extinction, whose presence in Crimea dates back to before the 15th century, were belatedly recognized as an indigenous people by the Parliament of Ukraine in 2021. Many Ukrainians do not even They knew their history. She was discovered thanks to the triumph in the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest of the Tatar performer Jamala with 1944, a song about the deportation ordered by Stalin.
Tatar loyalty to Ukraine angers Kremlin. A battalion of Tatar soldiers called Crimea fought in the Donbass from the first years of Russian interference and now fights within the regular army. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Tatar Rustem Umerov, born in Uzbekistan, as Minister of Defense in September.
“Today there is war because the West swallowed up the annexation of Crimea; then Russia went after the Donbass, and then it launched the large-scale invasion of Ukraine; I don’t understand those Westerners who tell us to give up territories and that then Russia will stop –Nuriieva-Letova laments–. On the contrary, Putin will then want more. “As far as I can judge from my bubble in Crimea, many people there are waiting for the arrival of the Ukrainian army and liberation.” Given the evolution of the war, this hope does not seem very realistic, but Ukraine does not want to give up Crimea.
