Crimea attacked as Tatars prepare to retake their homeland

'Living legend' gets guns as gifts

Djemilev sat down for over an hour in late February with Al Majalla for a wide-ranging interview in his office about the future offensive to retake Crimea.

He also spoke about discussions he has had with both the Russian and Turkish presidents, what he feels being a Muslim means, and his love of guns and other weapons - despite claiming he has never actually used them against anyone.

Ukrainian defence and interior ministers have both given Djemilev guns as gifts in recent years with a paper attesting that the weapons are "for protecting human rights", he told Al Majallla, grinning and noting that many in Ukraine know of his penchant for weapons.

Considered a living legend, 79-year-old Djemilev is the former Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People – designated an extremist organisation by Russia - and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament since 1998.

The Crimean Peninsula, which Turkic-speaking Sunni Muslim Tatars consider their homeland, is highly strategic and has been fought over by empires and countries for centuries.

It was annexed by the Russian Empire from the Ottomans in 1783.

The 1853-1856 Crimean War is associated with technological advances in warfare including mass-produced rifles and railway lines built to transport supplies.

Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014 at the beginning of a conflict between it and Ukraine that experienced a massive escalation in February last year when Russia invaded Ukrainian territory.

Tatars such as Djemilev have long suffered persecution. As a result of the mass deportation of hundreds of thousands under USSR leader Joseph Stalin, Crimean Tatars as of 2014 accounted for only an estimated 12% of the population on the peninsula.

Djemilev's family was among those deported to the territory of the current state of Uzbekistan in 1944, when he was only one year old. He later spent 15 years of his life in prisons as a result of his political activities.

Strategy for recapturing Crimea

There are two possible military ways for the liberation of Crimea to start, Djemilev opined.

The first, he said, would entail an "offensive through Kherson [occupied by Russia in March 2022 but recaptured by Ukraine in November], but this would require crossing a wide river and would costs thousands of Ukrainian lives. And the Ukrainian government understands the value of human lives."

The second, he said, would be "through the city of [currently Russian-occupied] Mariupol."

"Of course, the commander-in-chief will make the decision, but I think the offensive will start from both ways simultaneously," he said.

According to a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) between 22 February  and 6 March, "the majority of respondents - 64% - believe that Ukraine should try to liberate the entire territory, including Crimea, even if there is a risk of a decrease in support from the West and a risk of a longer war".

A phone call with Putin

When the conflict started between Russia and Ukraine in 2014, the first move by Russia was to annex Crimea before moving on to parts of the Donbas region.

Djemilov told Al Majalla that he had spoken to Russian president Vladimir Putin on the phone for over 45 minutes that year.

"Putin said Crimea's problems would be solved since Russia is a wealthy country," Djemilev said, and that Putin wanted Crimea to become part of the Russian Federation.

"I said, if you want to do something good, you need to withdraw your soldiers," Djemilov said, and that "if Russia wants to solve this problem, they need to speak to the Ukrainian government."

Securing Turkish weapons

When Russia conducted a massive invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, Djemilev said he was asked to go to Turkey for a month and that he had been involved in negotiations for weapons supplies to Ukraine.

One of the negotiations he had in Turkey in early 2022 was with executives from Turkey's Bayraktar company, Djemilev said.

The company is known for producing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), more commonly known as drones.

The Bayraktar TB2 "has been hugely popular in Ukraine, where it helped destroy Russian artillery systems and armoured vehicles. It even became the subject of a patriotic expletive-strewn hit song in Ukraine that mocked Russian troops, with the chorus "Bayraktar, Bayraktar", reported Turkey's Daily Sabah in early March of this year.

A discussion Djemilev had with the owner of Bayraktar last year, he told Al Majalla, was on the quantity of Bayraktar drones to be provided to Ukraine.

The owner "called his general manager and told him to call the Turkish ministry of defence to tell them to provide to Ukraine what they need", Djemilev said.

On hearing that "Ukrainians have not paid for the previous Bayraktar" drones, the owner stressed over the phone that: "please, do not talk about money. People are dying. We will talk about money when the war is over," Djemilev claimed.

"This is what it means to be a real Muslim, to me," he added, smiling.

"I may not know everything about Islam but I do know this:  when there is a conflict between a criminal and a victim or between evil and good, a Muslim cannot be neutral," he stressed.

Crimean Tartar diaspora

Chubarov, the current head of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, told Al Majalla in an interview in Kyiv that he too had spent a large part of his childhood in Uzbekistan.

Later he served in the Soviet military, where he remembers not eating enough for months at a time due to the need to avoid pork - which he says was commonly served to soldiers as the only option -  as part of his Muslim faith.

He noted that, even before Stalin, the Russian Empire had "tried to destroy Crimean Tatars" and that this is why there is a large diaspora.

"The number of Crimean Tatars is between 3 and 5 million in Turkey alone," he claimed.

In 2016, Russia designated the Mejlis an extremist organisation for "the use of propaganda of aggression and hatred towards Russia, inciting ethnic nationalism and extremism in society."

 "Russia continues to label us terrorists" despite a 2017 ruling by the UN's International Court of Justice, Chubarov told Al Majalla.

"I thought Ukraine would ask the citizens to resist against Russia" after the latter annexed the peninsula in 2014, Djemilev told Al Majalla. "Crimean Tatars were ready but that decision was not made."

Granted, he said, "a lot of embassies and representatives of Western countries called and asked them not to resist, saying that the occupation of Crimea would be solved peacefully. But many years later…you can see that is not the case."

He added that Crimean Tatar leaders had asked members of their community not to leave the peninsula after it was occupied but that tens of thousands had anyway, coming to territory held by Ukraine.

"Volunteer units of fighters were created in 2014," he said, and "the Crimean Tatar community tried to form a military unit between Crimea and Kherson. However, the Ukrainian authorities did not all authorise it as they were afraid of starting a larger war."

"The commander of the unit released a statement that if Russia starts ethnic cleansing in the Crimea, they will cross the border. This unit included fighters willing to carry out suicide attacks," he said.

But this, Djemilev added, "scared the Ukrainian government at that time."

Though Djemilev is known for his early support of non-violence, he told Al Majalla that: "You can use non-violence and non-violent methods for civil rights within a country. But it is the obligation of any civilian to take up arms and fight back if a foreign country invades your country."