Kyiv: “Crimea can be retaken quickly, but only when we get the necessary weapons.”
Mustafa Djemilev, also known as the ‘Son of Crimea’, told Al Majalla that, “when we talk about the liberation of Crimea, we are actually talking about foreign weapons needed”, since there are “about 145 military objectives” on the peninsula and “Ukraine can’t handle this sort of battle without those weapons.”
On the evening of 20 March, Ukraine's Ministry of Defence reportedly claimed that a strike had destroyed Russian "Kalibr" cruise missiles in Russian-occupied Crimea. It did not clarify who had conducted the attack.
The ministry added that the missiles were being transported by train in the town of Dzhankoi, where one of Russia’s two most important military airfields is located, according to Britain’s defence ministry.
“Crimea has become a sort of military base with a huge quantity of weapons,” the prominent Crimean Tatar Djemilev told Al Majalla in an interview in his Kyiv office in late February, claiming his sources tell him "there are also nuclear weapons there.”
Djemilev, who is widely seen as the top leader of the Crimean Tatar community, said Ukraine needs “rockets with a range of 300-350 km.”
He noted that “Ukraine has already liberated Kherson, which is the nearest city to Crimea” and that thus the operation to retake the peninsula could begin soon.
“Nato countries have these sorts of weapons”, he stressed, but “they are afraid that Ukraine might attack Russia on Russian territory and that this could start another world war.”
The current head of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, the group’s representative body in Kyiv, Refat Chubarov, noted to Al Majalla that “Crimea is a tool for Russian influence on the Black Sea and beyond, including Syria”, and that regaining it would be important for Ukraine as a whole.