10 years after illegal annexation, Crimea has become a template for Ukraine's new occupied territory

CNN
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A petite woman quietly leaves her home, escorted by a group of large men in green military uniforms. they look ferocious. A green balaclava covers most of their faces, concealing their true identity, but a Russian flag patch indicates their allegiance.

The woman, Crimean Tatar Lutfiye Zudiyeva, shared a video of the moment on her social media accounts.

“They came to my house to search,” she said in an interview from the occupied Ukrainian peninsula, looking just as determined as in the video. “I've been preparing for this for years.”

Her calmness and foresight come from experience. This is the third arrest since 2019. She said she was detained for an hour on charges of “abuse of freedom of the media” over social media posts.

“If you cover politically motivated criminal cases or write about torture, you can't help but attract the attention of special forces and the police,” she explained.

Zudiyeva is a human rights activist and one of the many Ukrainians who suffered during Russia's 10-year illegal occupation of Crimea. This period was marked by the imposition of Moscow's laws and institutions, the repression and repression of all opposition, and the repression of rebel groups. According to the United Nations, a serious violation of human rights.

“Arrests, searches, torture and repression are being carried out,” Zudiyeva said. “As soon as you try to publicly express a dissenting opinion or engage in any way, you become a target. That's inevitable.”

Arrests and large-scale raids like hers have occurred frequently since 2014, particularly, but not exclusively, in areas predominantly populated by the Crimean Tatar community.

Tatars are a Turkic Muslim minority widely considered to be the indigenous people of Crimea. They were persecuted even while the peninsula and Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union, and longtime dictator Joseph Stalin forcibly expelled them from Crimea in 1944.

Crimean Tatars were not allowed to return until the late 1980s and 1990s, when Ukraine achieved independence. Tatars were among those who opposed Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, and human rights groups have cited subsequent persecution of ethnic minorities by Russian authorities.

But since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, what was already common has become more frequent and more aggressive.

“The situation is only going to get worse,” said human rights lawyer Emil Kurbedinov, himself a Crimean Tatar. “Especially from 2022 onwards, cases of kidnapping and detention in prison without trial are increasing.”

Kurbedinov has lived in Crimea since 2008 and says he has also faced harassment by Russian authorities since 2014. He has been arrested several times, most recently in February on the same charges as one of his clients, Zudiyeva.

He said Russian authorities were acting under the guise of a “war on terror” and frequently claimed that Ukraine commanded and controlled opposition networks on the peninsula. He believes it's just opportunism.

“They grab people when it suits them and add charges that make it clear to society that they are terrorists,” he explained. “Under the auspices of the fight against terrorism, they can arrest religious figures, citizen journalists, people who have argued dishonestly with the authorities, and other disaffected people at once.”

Russia's occupation of Crimea began in 2014, shortly after the Maidan revolution in Ukraine. The turmoil and concerns have fueled pro-Russian sentiment in the region. The region was part of the Russian Republic within the Soviet Union until 1954, the Black Sea Fleet was based in the port of Sevastopol, and it was already tilted more towards Moscow than other parts of Ukraine. – Leading to protests and clashes.

While politicians in Kiev were trying to hold the country together following the sudden resignation of then-President Viktor Yanukovych on February 22 after months of political uncertainty and protests, Russia set its sights on Crimea.

Although the Russian government denied involvement, Russian soldiers in uniforms without insignia, known at the time as “little green men,” began to appear outside government buildings and military bases.

Amidst the chaos, many Ukrainian troops simply barricaded themselves in their bases as green men lined up around them. A Russian helicopter was spotted entering Ukrainian airspace. Two top commanders of the Ukrainian Navy have defected.

Although there were pockets of pro-Russian factions in cities such as Sevastopol that supported Moscow's annexation, this sentiment was generally not thought to be widespread. In the 1991 referendum, a slim majority of Crimeans voted in favor of Ukrainian independence. In 2010 local elections, then-leader Yanukovych's party, which never advocated Russia's annexation of Crimea or any part of Ukraine, won with nearly 50% of the vote. Research shows that before 2014, most residents believed Moscow's annexation was illegal or pointless.

A few weeks after the appearance of the Little Green Men, a fake referendum illegal under international law and not recognized by the majority of the international community resulted in 95.5% of the peninsula's population voting to leave Ukraine and join Russia. It has been shown that they wish to join.

“We are going home. Crimea is in Russia,” Crimea's Russian-installed Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov told a crowd gathered in Simferopol while vote counting was still underway. Ten years later, he is still in charge as head of the so-called Russian Republic of Crimea.

The replacement of Ukraine's institutions and the suppression of opposition began immediately after the vote.

“From the first months, we faced a huge number of human rights violations. There were hundreds of administrative cases, kidnappings, etc.,” Kurbedinov said. “We found ourselves in a completely different reality.”

According to the United Nations, that new reality is one that Russia intends to make permanent and irreversible.

“We witnessed a systematic effort to essentially erase Ukrainian identity, erase and suppress everything Ukrainian. And that includes the suppression of the Tatar national identity.” said Krzysztof Janowski of the United Nations Observer Mission in Ukraine. “For example, we know that there have been at least 100 cases of enforced disappearances among people who oppose the new regime and oppose the occupation,” he added.

The United Nations has announced that the Russian government has confiscated at least 730 plots of land belonging to Ukrainian and Tatar nationals and given it to Russian military personnel and former military personnel who took part in so-called “special military operations” in Ukraine. It has also become almost impossible to live in Crimea without a Russian passport.

“Without a Russian passport, you cannot use social services such as healthcare or pensions. Therefore, people are often presented with offers that they cannot refuse,” Yanowski said. “They have no access and are essentially unable to survive. Accepting a Russian passport is the way to survive this terrible situation.”

The biggest concern now is that Crimea has become a template for four other Ukrainian regions currently fully or partially occupied by Russia.

Russian Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk claimed that 90% of residents in the four regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia currently hold Russian passports. Volk said the first residents applied for Russian passports less than a week after Ukrainian troops withdrew from the eastern town of Avdiivka.

promotional activities

As for Crimea, Russia has tried to hide its oppression behind a veil of public investment and patriotism.

Ahead of the 10th anniversary of the annexation, billboards and posters have popped up across the peninsula celebrating how Russian government investments have improved local life. In one, Crimea is draped in the Russian flag, while another features Russian President Vladimir Putin and reads: “The West doesn't need Russia. We don't need Russia.” We need Russia. ”

This report is not new, as reports on Russian state television and local pro-Russian media frequently feature the construction of new roads and other public infrastructure, such as sports centers and, in some cases, mosques.

The Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea with mainland Russia and opened in 2018, is a source of great pride for Moscow and the focus of much of its propaganda. Its importance from a symbolic and strategic point of view also explains why Ukraine targeted it so many times during the war.

“This is our way of life,” says Kurbedinov. “You can drive down a nice road today and arrive home, but tomorrow it will be gone.”

Zudiyeva, like others in her community, did not set out to become a human rights activist. She wants to work in the field of education, and she even opened a children's center before Moscow occupied the peninsula.

But then the Russian soldiers arrived, along with Kremlin surveillance and repression.

“We started seeing news about missing people, and we started seeing news about some people being tortured,” she said. “I realized that I couldn’t abstract from this situation and live my life as if nothing had happened.”

For a while, she combined her newfound activity with a children's center, but then Moscow came knocking on her door.

“It was difficult to explain to parents who trusted us and brought their children to us why teachers were being harassed and children's centers were being searched,” she said.

She closed the center and focused on her own activities. She also became a journalist in 2020.

“I dream of writing something that will change the course of events, or that my work will lead to an outcome that will stop the repression in Crimea,” she said. “I do it consciously. I think I overcame my fear in 2014.”