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Kyivans march in solidarity with Crimean political prisoners (PHOTO)

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A protester holds a banner which reads: "Russian occupants, get out of Crimea!" People gathered at Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv on Feb. 26 to march for solidarity with Crimean Tatars who three years ago protested Russian occupation of the peninsula and to support the Crimean political prisoners and victims of the regime.
Photo by Anastasia Vlasova

More than 100 people marched in Kyiv on Feb. 26 to show solidarity with the political prisoners jailed by the Russian authorities in the occupied peninsula of Crimea.

The date was chosen to mark the day of Feb. 26, 2014, when thousands of Crimean Tatars protested in the Crimean capital of Simferopil against the local authorities’ attempt to pass a decision to separate Crimea from Ukraine and hand it over to Russia.

Russia annexed the peninsula anyway a month later. Since the annexation, the human rights situation has gotten bad in Crimea, with many political activists, a lot of them Crimean Tatar, getting imprisoned or going missing.