VIDEO
EXCLUSIVE
After Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Damir Minadirov, a Crimean Tatar and a student lawyer, decided he had to resist. He started volunteering for a human rights organization that was providing free legal advice for Crimeans persecuted by the Russian occupation authorities.
Very soon, Minadirov’s activism attracted the attention of the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB. Masked and armed agents arrived at his house, searched it and took Damir for questioning to their office. They tried to coerce him into becoming an informant and tortured him, but ultimately let him go. He immediately packed a small bag and fled to Kyiv. Six other Crimean Tatars arrested on the same day as Damir were later convicted of terrorism and sentenced to up to 19 years in prison by a Russian court.
At least 45,550 Crimean natives have left the peninsula and moved to mainland Ukraine since 2014. And this is not the first time Russia has expelled Crimean Tatars from their homeland. In 1944, the Soviet government deported the entire Crimean Tatar population to Central Asia and Russia. That’s how they became a minority in a place where 93% of the population was Crimean Tatar in 1760.
Minadirov’s grandparents were among those deported. His parents managed to move back to Crimea only in the late 1980s, something that had been forbidden for decades.
This story is the second part of a two-part series called “Losing our land,” which exposes Russia’s efforts to push Ukrainians out of Crimea and replace them with Russians.
Read the full story here.
Part one of the series nails down how Russia prosecutes Ukrainians who resist occupation and actively encourages Russians to move to Crimea
