When Russia invaded soldiers from Ukraine and Moscow for the first time entered Crimea in 2014, Ukraine’s foreign partners asked the Crimean authorities not to “provoke Russia”, the president of Crimean Tatar Mejlis told Euronews, rejecting Donald Trump's statements that Ukraine did not go to that Russia without shot “instead of that”.
“All our partners and allies at the time said that we should not provoke Russia, that they, with the Ukrainian state, would certainly find forms and means of resolving this crisis. I quote what they told me when I was in occupied Crimea,” said Refat Chubarov.
Chubarov recalled that he had spoken to the ambassadors of different countries almost every day and almost all told him that they “hoped that the Crimean Tatars would not provoke the Russian army”.
“Because then there would be pogroms, very tragic events would be very tragic, and they could not help civilians,” he recalls.
After the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Moscow declared the Mejlis – the only authorized representative and executive organization of the Crimean Tatar people – an extremist organization and prohibited its activities in Russia and caused by Crimea.
Chubarov was forced to leave the Black Sea peninsula shortly after.
In 2021, a court imposed in Moscow sentenced him to six years in prison to make accusations of organization of mass riots in 2014 and to publish calls to “violate the integrity of Russia” – the wording used by the Kremlin to describe the Crimean Tatars which oppose the annexation.
“Those who criticize us not to resist should recall the loose position of their own states, which has acted as guaranteed the security of the Ukrainian state under the Budapest memorandum,” he told Euronews, qualifying for the United States as one of the signatories of the memorandum.
By signing the Budapest memorandum, Ukraine has abandoned its nuclear weapons, hoping that other signatories would protect the country.
“But they were afraid, and now they blame us for not being able to resist a nuclear power, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. They blame us for failing,” he said.
“At that time, it was not only and not as long as the Ukrainian state failed, but the world has failed to stop the assault of a nuclear state, which is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.”
'Great lack of respect' for those who were killed
Another assertion of the American president, who made angry and shocked the Ukrainians and the Crimean Tatars, is that the peninsula was “handed over to Russia without having been drawn”.
Chubarov calls him “a great lack of respect for the Ukrainian army, which was killed in the first days of the occupation”.
“In the months following the occupation, in May and June, our young people were removed by force. We then found some of them killed, some of them to date that we cannot find, we do not know where they are,” he said.
“To say that the Crimea was taken without a single shot or without a single victim, it is simply to disrespect the people who were in this situation and to admit their ignorance of these events”.
ADVERTISEMENTMeanwhile, Russia has not changed its plans to occupy all of Ukraine, according to Chubarov. However, given that Moscow has not been able to achieve this for more than three years since the large -scale invasion, “Russia will keep Crimea until the end because Putin needs to be cried like insurance for Russian society to calm the people, since Russia could not achieve anything in more than three years.”
“If the President of the United States officially calls on the Russian territory of Crimea, it would be an excellent excuse for Putin to get out of the mess in which he is, and he would personally present him to Russian society as a huge victory,” he added.
This would only strengthen the regime in Moscow, and it would not lead to peace, concluded Chubarov.
