‘Ukraine will never surrender Crimea. No matter how hard Russia tries to rewrite history, that is our land and not theirs’.

This is how Refat Chubarov, president of the Mejlis, the council representing the Crimean Tatars, put it. He met him in Kyiv, where the body, whose authority is recognised by the entire international community, as well as by the UN, the Council of Europe, and the OSCE, had to relocate its headquarters, after the Russian Supreme Court identified it as a ‘terrorist organisation’ in 2016, due to its stance clearly opposed to the illegal annexation of the peninsula, exiling several of its exponents, including the leader himself.

Full interview:

‘Putin has been using historians and ideologists for years to try to make everyone believe that Crimea has always been Russian ,’ explains Chubarov, ‘ But history is history and you cannot change it to your liking. The Crimea was inhabited at different times by various peoples, such as the Alans, Sarmatians, Cimmerians, Goths, Huns, and Pechenegs, each of whom contributed to building the cultural identity of the Tatar people, who occupied an area even larger than the peninsula alone and were independent for almost three and a half centuries.

The Russian Empire, under Catherine II, only conquered those territories in 1783. From then on, we started to be a problem for Russia, because our very presence was enough of a reminder that that land was not historically theirs’.

This is also why, the Mejlis leader continues, ‘throughout history we Tatars have suffered various persecutions, such as the one that followed the Russian defeat in the Crimean War (1853-1856). In that case, Russia falsely accused the Tatar community of helping the coalition consisting of France, England, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia, and over the next four years forced 200,000 Tatars to settle elsewhere‘.

Ninety years later, Stalin went even further by deporting the entire population, which remained in exile for almost 50 years until the fall of the Soviet Union, while in our land the names of streets, monuments and buildings were changed in an attempt to erase all traces of our culture. ‘Our return,’ he continues, ‘was only possible after 1991, when the peninsula gained independence together with Ukraine. But then in 2014 the Russians returned, for whom we still represent an impediment to the promotion of their narrative, we are living proof of the falsity of their delusional historical manipulations.”

“I could say that they hate us, because we remind them at all times that they are only occupiers, just as they also hate Ukrainians and any other people who interfere with their plans.”

“If you were in Crimea now you would be horrified by the level of anti-Ukrainian hatred. They even claim that those who say they are Ukrainians are just Russians who have been deceived.”

The demonisation of the enemy, says Chubarov, is after all a constant in Soviet history first and then in Russian history, as the accusations of Nazism levelled against the Tatars to justify the ethnic cleansing of 1944 and against the Ukrainians to justify the invasion of 2022 also prove. “Since time immemorial,” he adds, “ successive regimes in Russia have kept alive the anti-Nazi and anti-fascist rhetoric. After the events of World War II, the population was educated to distinguish between black and white, between the socialist model and hatred for the Nazis. They did this to me as well. These stereotypes, inculcated for decades, are now more useful than ever for the regime to point at the enemy on duty, even though Stalinism was also an anti-human regime and therefore to all intents and purposes fascist’.

‘Of course, ‘ he goes on to say, ‘ since the fall of the USSR, the relationship with Kyiv has not always been easy for us either, but our relations with Ukraine have always been based on mutual understanding and respect for the rules, because this is our common tradition.

The Tatar position after the Russian invasion in 2014

For this reason, he says, the Tatar community and the Mejlis representing it rejected the Russians’ request for explicit support for annexation in 2014 from the outset.

“We told them clearly that in the face of such a blatant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Ukraine, we could not recognise a criminal, cowardly and cynical act as just. We had no other choice. We cannot say that something that is clearly black is white. Our history does not allow us to do so.

Moreover, that same history teaches us that Crimea’s problems have always come from Moscow, and we are well aware of Russia’s tendency to Russify, homologate, and suppress the identities of entire peoples in order to turn them into Russians, an activity in which Moscow invests a great deal.

This is also why here in Ukraine we see Buriati, Baschiri, Udmurti, Jakuti, Chechens fighting. That is, the peoples of the Caucasus. They all defend the russkyi mir, the Russian world, because they have been turned into Russians. So we knew very well if we accepted that embrace we would soon find ourselves strangled. In this regard, I remember that during one of our meetings, a woman said a phrase that struck me and that I often repeat: ‘Be honest, never give your hand to someone who breaks into your house, breaks through your walls, your doors, kills your people and swears to be your friend’. Friends do not present themselves like this’.

The Tatar Diaspora from Crimea

The consequence of the rejection, says Chubarov, is that relations between the Tatar community and the Crimean authorities have become increasingly strained over the years, to the extent that around one sixth of the 300,000 Tatars present before the annexation were forced to leave the peninsula.

‘On the other hand, ‘ he says, ‘ they have turned Crimea into a big military fortress. And in a fortress the last thing you need is people who are not loyal to you. That is why our community is repressed, often imprisoned or pushed to leave’.

A bitter statement, but one that does not prevent the President from looking positively to the future. “Ours is within a democratic Ukraine,” he states without hesitation. “This has been our position from the very first moment and is destined to remain so. In this sense, I feel I can exclude that Ukraine intends to give up Crimea, not only to preserve the Tatars, but also because without Crimea, Ukraine will not be able to guarantee either its economic or military security.

Territorial concessions cannot be supported by Europe and the world community, because if such an agreement were to happen tomorrow, God forbid, it would mean that there would no longer be the force of law in the world, but only the right to use force.

We, Crimean Tatars, who fought for the restoration of our rights for almost 50 years in the Soviet Union, could never accept this. In no way do we intend to make ourselves accomplices of the bandits who occupied our land, nor do I consider the idea of an ‘exchange of territories’ to be plausible, as there is nothing to exchange, all the regions in question belonging to Ukraine under international law.

Of course, I cannot rule out the possibility that there may be territorial concessions in the course of this war, but if there were, we would have to account for the collapse of civilisation. I would like to point out that in 2014, when Crimea was occupied, many in Europe were ready to cede it to appease Russia’s appetites. I would say that the situation in 2022 has shown that small concessions only lead to the aggressor making bigger claims.

In this sense, I believe that Western leaders, even before the Tatars or the Ukrainians, must think about the security of their own peoples. If they do, they will find more than enough reasons to rush to help us’.