Editor’s Note: This story is part one 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. See the second part here.
Ihor Movenko was unchaining his bicycle when a muscle-bound Russian cop punched him in the face, pulled him down to the ground and handcuffed him. He committed no crime. His offense? Having Ukrainian symbols on his bike in Crimea, two years after Russia annexed it.
Soon Russian police beat and arrested him again. Movenko then decided, as soon as he gets out of prison, he will leave his hometown of Sevastopol in Crimea and settle in the Ukrainian capital.
Illia Bolshedvorov was packing his bags for Crimea soon after Russia proclaimed the peninsula its territory in March 2014. A native of Siberia, Bolshedvorov was moving because he wanted to live in a warmer climate. After 2014, that wasn’t difficult: residency and work permits were no longer required for Russians.
Together, the two men’s stories encapsulate the fate of Crimea after 2014. Since Russia’s annexation, tens of thousands of ethnic Ukrainians have left the peninsula, often fleeing political persecution, human rights activists say. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians have moved in to take their place.
It’s an approach reminiscent of the Stalin era, when the Soviet Union forced populations — including some from Crimea — into internal exile, activists say.
“Russia’s policy is colonizing Crimea,” says Olga Skrypnyk, a lawyer at the Kyiv-based Crimean Human Rights Group. She left Crimea after receiving death threats from people she believes are in Russian intelligence.
Demographic change
Crimea’s demographics are changing, but measuring that change has proven difficult. The figures are disputable.
At least 172,400 Russian natives moved to Crimea since 2014 annexation, according to the Crimean Bureau of Statistics. At least 44,800 Ukrainians moved out from Crimea to mainland Ukraine during the given time, according to the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine. Another 2,500 people were expelled from Crimea, according to the analysis of the local courts’ decisions, issued by the Ukrainian human rights activists. They also calculated the number of inmates forcibly displaced from Crimea to Russia. It stands at 6,000.
The Crimean Bureau of Statistics estimates that 172,400 Russians have moved to the peninsula since the annexation. At the same time, it claims that the entire population of Crimea grew by just 70,000 people since 2014 and now stands at 2.3 million. In other words, roughly 100,000 others have disappeared.
The Russian Interior Ministry estimates the number of Russian newcomers at 65,137. But Ukrainian authorities believe it is closer to 300,000.
Tamila Tasheva, the Ukrainian president’s deputy representative on Crimean affairs, believes that Russia is publishing false statistics and the actual numbers are much higher.
“They (Russian authorities) realize that it is a war crime to forcibly replace the population, according to the Geneva Convention. So, they deliberately lower the statistics,” Tasheva, a Crimean native, who lives in Kyiv, told the Kyiv Post.
In January 2019, Russia’s independent Proekt.Media site reported that the Russian Bureau of Statistics was broadly manipulating its numbers to support the official Kremlin position.
Ukrainian activists allege that, amongst these manipulations, are falsifications that further propagate Russia’s takeover of Crimea.
On March 16, 2014, Russia organized a rigged referendum in Crimea under the close watch of its troops, who had landed on the Ukrainian peninsula to seize control. The vote was designed to create an illusion of democracy and justify the annexation.
Just two days after the “reunion of Crimea with Russia” — as it is called by the Kremlin — Russia imposed its legal system on Crimea. It then appointed officials, both loyal locals, and Russian state personnel, to enforce it.
Servicemen, police officers, intelligence agents, prosecutors, and clerks arrived in Crimea from across Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed dozens of Russian judges to serve in the peninsula.
Among them were four who would decide the fate of Movenko.
The attack
When Movenko was attacked, he was unchaining his bicycle. Suddenly a muscular police officer punched him in the face, dragged him to the ground and handcuffed him.
Movenko says he was beaten so badly that he barely survived.
A video of the attack shows Movenko lying on the ground bleeding heavily. A police patrol arrives and the arriving officer shakes hands with the cop who pounced on the Ukrainian activist.
“Shall we check the backpack?” one of the police officers asks.
Valentyna Movenko, Ihor’s wife, is heard offering to open her husband’s backpack. She is the one shooting the video. The police officers ignore her.
Before she started recording, the attacking police officer had accused Movenko of carrying a bomb, his wife told the Kyiv Post while sitting on the bench in a Kyiv park.
The video continues with Valentyna asking for water for her husband and calling for someone to perform first aid. The police officers again ignore her appeals.
“He could have killed him…,” Valentyna told the Kyiv Post. “(The blow) was as strong as if the attacker had been using weapons.”
Movenko suffered multiple fractures and a concussion. He spent a month in the hospital recovering.
The attacker, it turned out, held a black belt in karate. He too was a native of Crimea, Vladimir Sukhodolsky.
Vladimir Sukhodolsky, a Russian police officer accused of beating Ukrainian activist Ihor Movenko in Crimea in 2016, poses for a photograph with his family. (Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs)
Previously, Sukhodolsky served in the Berkut, a Ukrainian special police force that violently attacked and killed protesters in Kyiv during a savage crackdown on the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014. He then returned to Crimea and joined the Russian police force there during the annexation.
Sukhodolsky has never been held accountable for what he did to Movenko.
“I filed applications to the court so that it would open a case against him, but instead they charged me,” Movenko told the Kyiv Post.
The police told him they cannot prosecute a “hero” like Sukhodolsky, who had helped violently disperse EuroMaidan in Kyiv, Movenko recalls.
Selective ‘justice’
After Movenko left the hospital, he learned he had been charged with “demonstrating a Nazi symbol,” referring to a sticker on his bike.
There were a few stickers. One featured the trident, a Ukrainian national symbol, and another included the insignia of Azov Battalion, a reversed image of a Wolfsangel, a sign similar to what the Nazi Party used during World War II.
Formerly a volunteer unit, Azov is now part of Ukraine’s National Guard and is known for its ties to the far right. Azov denies these connections. However, back in 2016, the controversy surrounding the unit was less pronounced, and the soldiers were mostly regarded with respect for defending the Donbas.
This sticker caused a lot of trouble for Ihor also in the court.
Valentin Norets, the judge in Movenko’s case, had previously worked in Rostov-on-Don in Russia before Putin appointed him to serve in Sevastopol, Crimea in 2016.
Norets found Movenko guilty and ruled that he must pay a fine — even though Azov was not on the official list of organizations banned in Russia.
Movenko’s appeal was heard by another Russian judge, Tatiana Artamonova. Formerly a judge in Smolensk, she accepted a promotion from Putin to work in the Sevastopol city court.
Artamonova upheld the ruling and Movenko paid the fine. But within two months, he was violently detained again.
This time, the police accused him of publishing negative comments about Russia on social media, Movenko says.
All four judges who found Ihor Movenko guilty for, he says, his pro-Ukrainian position, came to Crimea from Russia after the 2014 occupation. All four were appointed by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin’s decree.
Pavel Kryllo, a native of Omsk, Siberia, heard Movenko’s case. In 2016, Putin also granted Kryllo a position at the district court in Sevastopol, Crimea.
On May 4, 2018, Kryllo sentenced Movenko to two years imprisonment for “calling for extremist actions on the internet.”
Movenko acknowledges that he left a comment on VKontakte, a Russian social network. However, that was one year before his arrest. He says he expressed disagreement with the Russian occupation of Crimea, something Russian courts often view as a crime. That’s certainly how judge Kryllo saw it.
“Everyone was shocked. No one — not even the prosecutors — expected such a ruling because they asked for a suspended sentence. My wife and I had cinema tickets for the next day after that hearing,” Movenko told the Kyiv Post.
Movenko appealed the verdict, and the case proceeded in the Sevastopol city court to yet another Russian judge, Vasiliy Avkhimov, who previously worked in a district court in Smolensk, a city in western Russia.
On June 26, 2018, Avkhimov changed Movenko’s indictment to a two-year suspended sentence with one year of probation and released him. By that time, Movenko had spent two months in jail.
Ihor and Valentyna Movenko sit on the bench in a Kyiv park speaking with the Kyiv Post about their journey from Crimea to Ukraine’s capital. (Kyiv Post)
Movenko’s wife Valentyna also had bad times – she was forced to quit her job as a procurement specialist in a supermarket because of the accusations against him, she says.
“People disappear in Crimea. Sometimes they are found, sometimes not…It was dangerous to stay,” she told the Kyiv Post.
Finally, in June 2019, the family packed their whole life into a few boxes, hired a car and fled to Kyiv.
Seeking sunshine
While Movenko was unsuccessfully seeking justice, Siberian native Ilya Bolshedvorov was building a new career as a lawyer in Crimea, a place with little rule of law.
Bolshedvorov, a veteran of the Second Chechen War, arrived just a few months after Russia imposed its laws in Crimea in March 2014. There was significant demand for professionals who knew Russian regulations, which were foreign to most Crimeans. Bolshedvorov had that knowledge.
Russian native Illia Bolshedvorov is walking along the Simferopol park in Crimea in January 2020. (Kyiv Post)
Bolshedvorov had been planning to escape the freezing Siberian winters for years. For him, the news of Russia’s occupation of sunny Crimea was a dream come true. He sold his property in Russia to buy a three-bedroom apartment in a village next to Simferopol.
He and his wife are self-employed lawyers. They make a good living, he says. The family repaired and furnished the apartment they bought and then purchased a used car.
“I am satisfied with everything. It is warmer here compared to home, where it is snowy and 30 degrees below zero now…The sea is here. Overall, it’s better for the kids,” Bolshedvorov, a father of two, told the Kyiv Post while walking through a park in Simferopol.
Bolshedvorov’s father is now selling his property in Russia to join the family in Crimea.
But life isn’t entirely sweet for Bolshedvorov. Despite strongly supporting the Russian occupation of Crimea, he is dissatisfied with the Crimean authorities.
“Sometimes people tell me that, back in the times of Ukraine, it was better here. I disagree, but keep communicating with them,” he says.
“They are fighting the Crimean authorities. So am I,” he adds.
However, if Ukrainians are fighting against surveillance, attacks, and arrests, Bolshedvorov opposes illegal construction, bad roads, and high prices.
Bolshedvorov organizes demonstrations in Crimea, but his main argument is that Crimea has remained “as corrupt as it was under Ukraine.”
Russian native Illia Bolshedvorov protests against the Crimean authorities despite strongly supporting Russian annexation of Crimea, which was deemed illegal by the international community. (courtesy)
For his activism, he says, he was arrested a few times, but was then let go with no serious consequences. In contrast, Movenko never took part in an actual protest but was beaten, fined for displaying Ukrainian symbols and jailed for comments on the internet.
Bolshedvorov does not perceive his few hours of arrest as persecution.
The Siberian lawyer is also a chairman of the Crimean branch of the Veterans Party. Back in 2015, the party’s candidate for the State Council of Crimea was extensively backed by Igor Strelkov, a Russian military veteran who played a leading role in occupying Crimea and then invading the Donbas.
Holding the Kremlin accountable
Russia is unlikely to ever face justice for driving Ukrainians out of Crimea and bringing in Russians, despite being caught red-handed.
Moscow has launched a number of state programs to send Russians to the peninsula, according to rights activists. The several independent groups of lawyers are collecting evidence of this process for future Ukrainian litigation against Russia.
In international courts, Ukraine would have to prove that Moscow encourages Russians like Bolshedvorov to move to Crimea. Volunteer movements are not illegal, but a government pushing people to relocate could be considered a war crime.
Appointing Russian state employees in Crimea, like those four Russian judges who tried Movenko, flagrantly violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, according to a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The UN deemed the Russian occupation of Crimea as illegal. Since then, it has been documenting Russia’s crimes in the peninsula — but only remotely. The local authorities banned the monitoring mission from entering Crimea.
UN watchdogs have found significant evidence that Russia forcibly transfers people in and out of the peninsula.
As many as 2,425 people have faced “administrative expulsion” from the peninsula by decisions of the occupation courts since 2014, according to the report issued in June 2018 by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union and the Regional Centre for Human Rights.
Many of them were forced out because they refused to change their Ukrainian passports to Russian ones. Hence, in Russia’s view, these people should be treated as immigrants and may be expelled or deported.
The majority of Ukrainians left “voluntarily,” not waiting until the courts forced them to. So did Movenko.
However, legal expulsion is just one of Russia’s tools for changing the demography of Crimea, the human rights activists say. According to their research, there are at least 8,000 other persons forcibly taken from Crimea to Russia for various reasons. Among them prisoners and orphans.
“There are at least 6,000 inmates deported from Crimean jails to Russia to serve their sentence,” said Vitaliy Nabukhotny, a lawyer at Regional Centre for Human Rights.
Russia also deploys Crimean military forces to other remote parts of Russia, the researchers say. Moreover, thousands of youngsters are being sent from Crimea for military service in Russia.
“In violation of international humanitarian law, 12,000 men from Crimea have been conscripted into the Russian Federation army since 2015,” the OHCHR’s report from 2018 says.
In 2001, Russians made up 58% of the Crimean population and Ukrainians were 24%, according to the population census that year, the last that Ukraine held before the annexation.
In 2014, Russia held another population census and claimed 68% of Crimeans are Russians and 15% are Ukrainians. Ukraine does not recognize this data.
Since the occupation, Ukraine has sent four notices to the International Criminal Court, based in Rome, concerning the illegal displacement of the Crimean population by Russia. Kyiv expects the Court to start an investigation by the end of 2020.
Ukraine is suing Russia over the occupation in a number of international courts, but there are a few major problems. First, this process takes years. Second, Russia continuously ignores what the international community thinks.
On Oct. 15 in 2019, the UN acknowledged Russia’s violation of the Geneva Conventions in Crimea. Two days after Putin revoked Russia’s accession to the Geneva protocol on war crimes victims.
In March 2014, Ukraine appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg against the Russian occupation of Crimea. The court accepted the claim. Hearings are ongoing. However, in 2017, Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled that it does not have to comply with the ECHR when it feels its decisions are “unconstitutional.”
“It is a dead-end, and that is why we left,” Movenko says of the Russian occupation. “No one knows when it will end.”
