Crimea. The Return
Ten years ago, thousands of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians protested in front of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Simferopol against Russia’s attempts to seize the peninsula and supported the unity of Ukraine. They responded to the call of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, which will soon be banned by Moscow.
The peninsula avoided the fate of Donbas since it was quickly occupied physically without large-scale hostilities. Then Russia started real occupation: it imposed its laws, culture and education here, as well as facilitated mass migration of hundreds of thousands of its citizens to Crimea. It also systematically imprisoned those who resisted the occupation. Nariman Dzhelal, Deputy Chair of the Mejlis, stayed on the peninsula and continued his work, but he was detained by the FSB in 2021 and later sentenced by the puppet Crimean “justice system” to 17 years in a maximum security penal colony. He is serving his illegal sentence in Russia.
Moreover, Russia turned Crimea into a military foothold.
A large Russian army grouping attacked Kherson Oblast and went on to attack Mykolaiv and Mariupol from there at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Subsequently, Crimea became a base from where enemy planes, helicopters, drones, and missiles flew and continue flying towards the front and further into the rear, targeting peaceful Ukrainian cities.
This was the end of the tense Crimean silence period: Ukraine started effectively striking military facilities in Crimea, as well as the Kerch Bridge, a symbol of Russia’s presence on the peninsula, and sank Russian warships in the Black Sea.
On 26 February, the day of the Crimean resistance to the Russian occupation, the Ukrainian School of Political Studies (USPS) spoke with four of its Alumni from Crimea about what mainland Ukraine must understand about the peninsula’s current state and how it should be reintegrated after liberation to ensure reconciliation, justice, and a common future within united Ukraine.
“Crimean Tatars understand that the only way to restore their rights is with the Ukrainian state”
Crimea is a military base and a territory where Russians have worked out all the methods they later extended to other occupied territories. The Russian population moved to the newly occupied territories, the so-called managers, teachers, and law enforcement officers, who had been lacking for a certain time in the territory occupied by Russia.
But Crimea is also just people who continue living there. When the occupation began, life on the peninsula did not stop. But people did not choose to be occupied. They are just surviving, you have to look at it that way. Some people collaborate and actively cooperate, but they are far from being the majority. Most people just keep living, somehow earning for their families and adapting. And there are people who are not ready to adapt and start resisting. There are many times more Yellow Ribbon movement activists in Crimea than in other occupied territories.
Crimean partisans, ATESH (Ateş) (ed. note: a military guerrilla movement in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and Russia created by Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in September 2022 following the Russian military invasion) and the Yellow Ribbon are not ephemeral movements but real people who are resisting. It’s very inspiring. We monitor all the trials and know about at least 600 cases of resistance in Crimea. People are being prosecuted for yellow and blue paint on the occupation administration, for the inscription “Chemodan, vokzal, Tambov” (Suitcase, railway station, Tambov) written by one man on his neighbour’s fence. A young man in Sevastopol trampled on a Russian flag and was also brought to justice for this. Artist Bohdan Ziza poured paint on the occupation administration in Yevpatoria. In Crimea, people are being punished for tattoos with Ukrainian symbols.
It seems that all this was snoozing and woke up during the full-scale invasion. People realised that they were now being fought for. The state says now that we will liberate the territories through political and diplomatic means, as well as military means. The government has started to articulate this clearly at all levels.
Our victories in Crimea have not been communicated enough. For example, those with the Black Sea Fleet and the Black Sea area. The Kerch Bridge is one of the few symbols of the Russian Federation’s presence in Crimea. Russia should blame itself for inventing this narrative. When there was the first incoming strike on the Kerch Bridge in autumn 2022, people in Crimea, even those who were strongly pro-Russian, said: “Wow, it turns out Russia is not that powerful if it can’t protect its symbol.” Unblocking the grain corridor, sinking ships, damaging port infrastructure, striking the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol. The latter is a super special operation. For Sevastopol residents, the fleet is sacred. When that sacred thing is hit by a missile, the local population does not suffer, but the occupying military does, it affects the locals greatly. That is why the protest movement in Crimea is growing. You can feel that there is a fight for Crimea. People see it.
Many foreign experts have it lingering in their minds that the situation with Crimea is not so clear. All of this stems from false narratives that have been formed for decades in the Western intellectual tradition. We are trying to debunk them.
We are preparing for this. We are talking about what needs to be done now, not just during or after the liberation. Now, the key emotion of people in Crimea is fear. Fear about the future, uncertainty and lack of information. Regardless of whether this population is pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian. That’s why we need to talk about certain things correctly.
When we say that all people there are collaborators, it is a bad talking point. The talking point we are already communicating is that you will not be held liable just because you live in the occupied territory. People who have betrayed their oath, the military, the entire law enforcement sector, judges, investigators, and top officials of the occupation administrations will definitely be held accountable. But if a person is an ordinary doctor, they should not be held accountable. Most people should not worry.
All property issues also cause fear. A person lived under the Ukrainian government, and then Russia came and started re-registering documents and property. What will happen when Ukraine regains control of the territory? People are concerned about very common things. There is a great demand for this.
When we regain control of the territory, all reforms implemented in Ukraine since 2014 should start working there, e.g., decentralisation, education reform, anti-corruption reform, etc. Of course, language legislation should also come into effect, but there should be a transition period. If we scare people off right away, it will bring no good.
A whole generation has already grown up in Crimea who did not have the opportunity to learn Ukrainian since it was not taught during the occupation. We have to introduce a number of programmes for the transition period, possibly bilingual and trilingual. The Ukrainian state language should function everywhere, but there should also be a transition period. We are trying to communicate that no one has ever punished anyone for using Russian.
I do not have overly romanticised views on reintegration processes. They will be very difficult. We must have a specific plan. Then, we will adjust it based on the situation on-site. Maybe it will even change by 50%, but at least we will have a starting point to work with.
There should be a process of cognitive de-occupation, as Russia has been planting time bombs in people’s minds. And such bombs need to be unblocked so that they do not explode in people’s heads. Cognitive processes will be the most difficult. We already need to think about where to look for common ground. It is quite possible that we should have other textbooks for Crimeans, for example, where they can learn about the realities of the great war.
Ukrainians began to discover Crimean Tatars after 2014. People saw that Crimean Tatars were volunteers, that they helped the Ukrainian military who stayed in the blocked units, and that they organised the largest rally on 26 February. Mustafa Dzhemilev, who told Putin in a telephone conversation: withdraw your troops, then we’ll talk. Who was talking to Putin in such a way at that time? Crimean Tatars began to take office in the authorities. A Crimean Tatar had never been a President’s representative before me. I was appointed to this position not on ethnic grounds but as a professional. But the fact that I am a Crimean Tatar did not interfere with that decision. It used to be an obstacle to being appointed to top positions. Rustem Umerov is now the Minister of Defence. He was appointed not because of being a Crimean Tatar, yet this is a critical message for Crimea and international partners that we will never forget about Crimea.
I think the adoption of the law on indigenous peoples was a historic breakthrough. It is a powerful signal for Crimean Tatars living in Crimea. Russia persecutes Crimean Tatars and does not recognise them as an indigenous people, but Ukraine does. Crimean Tatars understand that the only way to restore their rights is with the Ukrainian state.
“Proper communication with Crimea when we return it is a very important task for us”
Ukrainians living in mainland Ukraine had not really understood Crimea before the war. We hadn’t actually understood ourselves either because everyone was bound up in the problems of their region, their city, and their village, and their regional identity was stronger than the national one. We started to come together as a country only after 2014. Now, we feel like a single body. We all feel sad when there are explosions in Dnipro or Odesa.
Unfortunately, Crimea fell out of the process when we were uniting in such a traumatic way. The task is complicated by the fact that Crimea has changed significantly over the past 10 years. It was already a difficult region that always bore certain resentment against Ukraine, and it was often said that Ukraine had forgotten about them. Crimean Ukrainians repeated that Crimean Russians did it, and so did Crimean Tatars. Such resentment and regionalism were used very well by the Russian occupiers when they came to Crimea in February 2014.
Many people came to Crimea on holiday and took it only as a resort. The sea, the jazz festival. Few people were interested in what was happening there. Crimea has never been very pro-Russian. It was a region with a Russian-speaking population, and even Crimean Ukrainians spoke Russian. It was also a region that traditionally was in the sphere of influence of the Party of Regions and all those eastern parties that “sold” the Russian language, strong businessmen and post-Soviet conservatism in their ideologies. As of 2014, the Russian Unity Party, led by Serhii Aksionov, had only 4% support, and the Party of Regions was the leading party, as it was in any eastern region at that time. It’s not about pro-Russian attitude, it’s part of the landscape that existed in Ukraine at the time. Many Crimeans really looked up to Russian news. They were not used to watching Ukrainian news, although they had a habit of watching Ukrainian TV shows. And this is probably a failure of our information policy. All these facts influenced the way Crimea was occupied.
Many people living in Crimea have never travelled outside the peninsula. And if they did, it was towards Moscow or St Petersburg. They travelled to mainland Ukraine very seldom. Those who have seen mainland Ukraine at least once were less afraid of it, they understood it. But for those who have never been there, Ukraine did not exist as such. They lived in their own space and made friends with their deemed relatives from Moscow.
But there was never any total support of Russia in Crimea. There was also a Maidan in Crimea, albeit a small one, and there were protests against the occupation in Crimea. No one likes to recall it now.
Russian propaganda lied a lot about how everything happened. For example, they lie that Crimea was taken without casualties. There were casualties among Crimean Tatar activists, there were casualties among Ukrainian service members. These were isolated cases, but they happened. A lot of people disappeared in the following months and continue to disappear now. Crimea is not a territory where everyone is OK. As a person from Crimea, I am quite often asked: why did you leave Crimea, as everything seems to be fine there? No, it is not fine. If you don’t accept the party line, you live the life of a guerilla fighter. You have to control what you say, where you go, who you talk to, and whether the person next to you is a whistle-blower at all times because there are a lot of those in Crimea.
After the occupation, many people were forced to take Russian passports. They did it not because they wanted to be Russians but because if you don’t have a Russian passport, you can’t get medical services, and your child can’t go to a kindergarten or school. You have no right to literally anything. This ausweis is not a passport of choice, it is a passport of a forced penalty. If you don’t take it, your life in Crimea ends at this point.
Another big story is the history of the Crimean Tatar people. It was a matter of principle for the Crimean Tatars to return to Crimea. They are the indigenous people of Crimea. It is important for Crimean Tatars to be in their homeland. They cannot leave because if they do, it will mean the end for the whole nation. Ukraine has treated the Crimean Tatar people rather badly throughout its existence. At one time, not Russians but Crimean Tatars were the main enemies of the SSU in Crimea. Ukraine did not give them what it was supposed to.
The Crimean Tatars, as an indigenous people who are suffering, are one of the powerful factors proving that we can return Crimea. Our European partners are well aware of this. We must act with dignity towards the Crimean Tatars. If we fail to do that, if we do not provide them with the autonomy they seek, we increase, rather than decrease, the risks that Russia will reiterate: “Your Ukraine has abandoned you.”
Life in Crimea under Putin has shown Crimeans that this is a rather harsh experience. Perhaps, if Ukraine is patient, the experience of returning to Ukraine will be positive. But these people have not gone through what we have — they are completely different. They also lost people in this war. There was forced mobilisation, and not everyone could avoid it. We will have a situation with families where people used to fight on the other side, and this is also a great problem. And we have to somehow come to an agreement with those whose relatives died in the war, fighting against us. This is a painful experience, but other nations also had it.
The first thing people are going to see after the de-occupation depends on the development of the war. If everything goes peacefully, we will not see Crimea in the neglected state we are imagining. It has the same restaurants as Kyiv. People live the same life as in Ukraine. They are not deprived of the blessings of civilisation, as we like to imagine. We will also see that this is a completely Russian-speaking region that no longer understands much about what modern Ukraine is. Ten years have passed, and a generation of new people has grown up who do not really understand what Ukraine is. When Ukraine de-occupies Crimea, it will face the fact that it is feared.
Crimea will not be a bare territory without inhabitants after its return. Of course, most Russians will flee. However, the Crimeans who stay there will be very different in terms of their identity, their moods, and their fears.
Proper communication with Crimea when we return it is a crucial task for us.
There will be a lot of work for our state. How to properly implement the law on cooperation (collaboration). We will not be able to imprison half of the peninsula’s population, as everyone there has worked as teachers, doctors or plumbers for 10 years. We have to understand who will be held liable for their activities and who will not. We will also need a large pool of teaching and managerial staff to revive the state of Ukraine there. We need to be very patient. Look at us fighting among ourselves! And here, we will have a region that is very different from us. If there is social humiliation, social oppression, arrogance, and cruelty, it will ultimately play against us. At one time, there was a great project called East and West Together. We will really need such projects, where some people will extend a hand and other people will be able to accept it.
We cannot exchange Crimea for peace because, in such a case, not only will we lose, but the world where we exchange Crimea for peace will also lose. Then, all other countries with territorial claims will realise that these claims can be resolved outside the legal framework. Neither Ukraine nor the world or Crimeans can benefit from us exchanging Crimea for anything.
“There are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens in Crimea who are waiting for Ukraine to return”
Without regaining control over Crimea, we won’t be able to survive as a fully valid subject of international law and an independent state since Crimea is a security issue. Today, Crimea is a place of arms from where a large-scale offensive was launched against the entire south of Ukraine, which created huge problems for us. It is a place from which they regularly launch missiles across the entire territory of Ukraine. Without controlling Crimea, we will not be able to guarantee the country’s military security.
Without Crimea, we cannot guarantee our economic security either. Ukraine is an export-oriented country. It is crucial for us to have access to the sea and open maritime trade routes. Holding Crimea allows the occupier to block the exit from the Sea of Azov and, sometimes, the Black Sea passage. Ukraine was able to resolve this issue largely this year when Russia tried to block the Black Sea route. However, this is not yet what we need. By occupying Crimea, Russia has blocked Ukraine’s access to 80% of the Ukrainian shelf, and this is where one of the keys to Ukraine’s energy independence lies, as there are significant hydrocarbon and other resources. We have a direct economic interest in returning Crimea.
The moral aspect is also significant. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens in Crimea are waiting for Ukraine to return. The Ukrainian state must do everything possible to ensure that these citizens see the restoration of the Ukrainian legal framework.
Three indigenous peoples are integral to the Ukrainian political nation: the Crimean Tatar, the largest indigenous people in Ukraine, the Karaites, and the Krymchaks. Crimea is their major place of residence. For all these 10 years, the occupiers have been systematically discriminating against the Crimean Tatar people. National self-government bodies have been banned in Crimea. The share of Crimean Tatars among political prisoners and prisoners of conscience is disproportionate. This is also an important reason why Crimea should be liberated.
Ethnic Ukrainians are the second largest ethnic community in Crimea. The occupiers are trying to erase Ukrainian civic and ethnic identity. The second largest ethnic community is under threat and is in an extremely dramatic situation. Occupiers destroyed all civil society structures that ethnic Ukrainians had had in Crimea before 2014. They immediately started to persecute active members of the Ukrainian community. Some of them were imprisoned, others simply disappeared, such as AutoMaidan activist Vasyl Chernysh, who vanished in March 2014 in Sevastopol. We still know nothing about him. We are seeing a new round of persecution during the large-scale stage of aggression. For example, someone reported a woman in Yalta for having yellow and blue fingernails. And she was investigated by the punitive bodies. Businesses face problems if a Ukrainian song is played in some cafés or restaurants, as people are fined and imprisoned for this.
Last year was a significant year for the Ukrainian community in a negative sense. Occupiers seized the main sanctuary of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Cathedral of Prince Volodymyr and Princess Olga. Under conditions where all public institutions were destroyed, ties with Ukraine were artificially severed, when Ukrainians were under fierce anti-Ukrainian information and psychological pressure when Russian propaganda told them that Ukrainians were Nazis, Banderites, and fascists, that there were no Ukrainians at all, the church was one of the few places where they could somehow maintain their identity. Pressure on this church started in 2014. But priests still managed to fulfil their Christian duty and support Ukrainians morally and spiritually until last year. Now, they are unable to do it.
The return of Crimea is also important for us from the point of view of returning historical monuments. A tenth of the historical, archaeological, cultural and park art monuments registered in Ukraine are located there. Various civilisations have met there since antiquity, and it has a rich cultural heritage. The acquisition of Chersonesos by Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv in the X century enabled our first “European integration,” i.e., it facilitated the Christianisation of Kyivan Rus and allowed him to marry the porphyrogenitus Princess Anna, who belonged to the prestigious dynasty of Byzantine emperors.
According to various estimates, from 500,000 to 1 million Russian colonisers entered Crimea. These are Russian citizens who entered the territory of Crimea illegally after 2014. Already now, we need to communicate signals to them that they must leave Crimea, as they are staying there illegally. While they still have time, they can resolve their property issues and return to Russia in peace so that they do not have to deal with many problems when Ukraine’s sovereignty in Crimea is restored.
Justice will be very important after the Crimea return. Those who committed serious crimes cannot go unpunished. On the other hand, there should be forms of political rehabilitation for those who did not commit serious crimes but were forced to cooperate with the occupation administration.
Crimean schools are used now by the occupiers as a mechanism for militarising childhood and brainwashing. It is organised by school principals, all these class hours and “Conversations About Important Things.” Some administrations should be removed from their office and replaced by trained people: some from Crimea and some from other areas.
The quick occupation of Crimea was possible because the Russian navy was deployed there. It makes no sense to demilitarise Crimea completely. We live in an unstable world. But Ukraine will not allow the presence of Russian troops in Crimea after de-occupation. We are integrating into the Western security space, and we are striving to join NATO, so a base of allied forces may be deployed in Crimea, which will deter Russia from trying to undermine the situation in southern Ukraine once again.
There may be different options for de-occupation. The ideal situation for us would be to neutralise the Black Sea Fleet forces in Crimea, destroy communication routes between Crimea and the aggressor state, cut the land corridor, and destroy the illegal Kerch Bridge. If we manage to keep Crimea cut off from the occupying state for several months, Russia will simply be unable to maintain its military bases. Then, the moment will come when Russia is forced to leave Crimea. This is the most favourable scenario for us. But we don’t know what will happen in real life.
“Russia still cannot digest Crimea. It creates problems for Russia”
Most people did not understand Crimea, as the pace of life and way of life there differed. Unlike in the east, especially in Donetsk after Euro 2012, which was still inscribed in the general Ukrainian history. And Crimea… I remember when I came to Kyiv after the 2014 events, after the occupation, I was told: “Well, you have always been quite pro-Russian there.” I was surprised how easily everyone accepted that we had always been different from Ukraine.
We just had to accept another experience as our own one, and that was important. I’m not even talking about the fact that it was a revelation for many that there are Crimean Tatars in Crimea. And that Crimean Tatars were much more important for Ukraine’s independence and history than cheeks and pilaf. Crimean Tatars still have no guarantees of national autonomy. We have kind of half-measures. It is so because everyone thinks about their electorate and what other Crimeans will say. But rights are not about what others are going to say. It’s about what they are entitled to. It would be much easier for Crimean Tatars to fight if their right to do so was recognised.
Speaking about myself 10 years later, what I should have understood about Crimea is that our country is too big and too diverse to think that it is enough for us just to live our own lives for it to be sovereign and integrated in its diversity. However, I often ask myself: Can I still speak on behalf of Crimea, who has not been living there for 10 years?
People from Crimea did everything at home: rest, work, go to the mountains, go to the seaside and go on holiday. Therefore, Ukraine had very little experience in communicating with Crimea. When people came to us on holiday, we were working. When Kyiv was on holiday, Crimea was working. Those who came to us in the summer were perceived as a resource to use to live for the remaining nine months.
For a long time, I was a classic Crimean who believed that my Crimean identity prevailed over my Ukrainian one. But it has never been Russian. I was born in 1990 in the Soviet Union, but I have lived my whole life in independent Ukraine. I went to a Ukrainian school with a Ukrainian flag and coat of arms. I studied at the national university. My studies were in Russian, but they were never Russian. My generation had no doubt which state we belonged to — it was definitely Ukraine.
I didn’t feel like I was abandoned. It seems to me that “Crimea was abandoned” is a Russian narrative. We were in the conditions we had. Six days before, we cried on Maidan for the people who had been shot. Our president and the entire political leadership fled with the entire treasury. I remember going to a protest for a united Ukraine in Crimea and how some guys who called themselves the Crimean Self-defence snatched my poster from my hands. I was engaged in freedom of assembly in Crimea, I know all the Crimean freaks, and it was definitely not the Crimean self-defence. But I didn’t feel like I was abandoned. I had the feeling that our neighbour had again taken advantage of our weakness at a time when we needed help more than ever.
People did not get what they wanted. In fact, the quality of life has changed significantly only for those whom Putin’s regime relies on, i.e. the military and pensioners. Their lives have really changed, while others are not very happy. They are not happy in Crimea to see the “SMO” (special military operation) veterans coming there. All these things indicate that Crimea is still a stolen land. It has not fully integrated into Russia over the past 10 years, although Russia is making a lot of efforts to attach it to itself.
We did everything right after the occupation. There were entry and exit checkpoints for 8 years. There were conditions for people to continue communicating with the temporarily occupied territories. Every month, about a million people passed through them in the east and Crimea. There was a procedure for obtaining official Ukrainian documents, and Administrative Service Centres were located close to the delimitation line. A simplified procedure for obtaining a birth certificate was adopted. I was involved in the creation of a simplified university admission programme for graduates from the occupied territories.
Services are, after all, the way to link the state and its people. I don’t want to say that Crimeans are consumers, but it is actually very important which document you receive first. Thus, now, Ukraine can only try to create as many conditions as possible for such small ties.
If we say now that all those who have received Russian passports are no longer our citizens, then there will be no real citizens in Crimea. Then, the legitimacy of returning this territory will be reduced significantly. There will be people in Crimea who are not going to want Ukraine to return. But there will also be people who want this. The task of citizens under occupation is to survive. Everyone does not need to be a hero. There is a certain number of heroes, but not everyone should be one. We should not expect 2.5 million Crimeans to be heroes.
Conciliation is a mechanical process. What is important is the political context in which people are placed, what they will see on TV, what will be said in parliament, and what laws will be adopted.
There is a transitional justice policy that should provide for very specific steps from the state. Anyway, when the war is on for 10 years, we will have a lot of unresolved issues. Someone lost property, someone built property, someone acquired property, someone was born, someone died, someone got divorced, or someone changed their surname twice. And here, you can’t figure it out without the state.
I believe that everything will be fine. Some of the traitors will leave on their own. Those who made unlawful decisions, took part in combat actions, committed war crimes, and actively cooperated with the enemy will leave on their own. The majority will take out their expired Ukrainian passports and say: “We have been waiting for you for 10 years!” There will be a problem with a certain small part of them. The transition policy concerns this small number of proactive people who feel injustice because of what has happened. Everything should be taken not as a problem but as an objective.
I do not believe that calls to relatives in Crimea will change the course of the war, but they can definitely change the post-war situation if not all such ties are broken.
