Residents of Crimea will be happy to welcome the Ukrainian army, as well as the people of Kherson, believes member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar Parliament Eskender Bariev, quoted by the magazine “New Voice of Ukraine”.
The Tatar politician states that there are three categories of people living in Crimea. The first is pro-Ukrainian residents who have not disappeared even 8 years after the illegal annexation of the peninsula by Moscow in 2014.
According to him, the second category consists of collaborators.
“These are the citizens of Ukraine who began to support the actions of the Russian Federation and its actions on the territory of Ukraine, the so-called ‘special forces operation,'” he says of the invasion launched by Vladimir Putin on February 24.
“But their position is constantly changing. On the one hand, there are collaborators who will flee from Crimea. And then there are collaborators who will say: we worked here, now we will work for Ukraine,” says Bariev.
Russia changed the ethnic structure of Crimea
The third category of Crimeans are Russian citizens living on the peninsula, and, according to Bariyev, their number is 2.5 times greater than the entire Tatar population of the peninsula.
“More than 600,000 Russians came. They violated international law, they came illegally (…) when they hear that the Armed Forces are approaching the borders of Crimea, in my opinion, they will begin to withdraw more actively. They will not stay in Crimea,” he added.
Russia began its occupation of Crimea in March 2014, when many pro-Ukrainian residents of the peninsula fled the region as Moscow began to resettle its citizens there.
The peninsula was used to invade southern Ukraine in the early days of the war, but the invading forces failed to capture the strategic cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa.
Tatars oppose the Russian occupation
The city of Kherson, the only regional capital that the Russian army managed to capture since the start of the war, was liberated by Kyiv forces last Friday, two days after Moscow’s defense ministry announced the withdrawal of its troops from the west bank of the Dnipro River.
Despite close relations with Moscow, Turkey does not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea because of the plight of ethnic Muslim Tatars who oppose the Russian occupation.
Immediately after the annexation by Moscow in 2014, the Crimean Tatars were asked to evacuate part of the territories where they lived in order to resettle in another part of the peninsula.
In September, Turkish President Recep Erdogan demanded that Russia return the occupied territories to Ukraine if it wants lasting peace.
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