Crimean Tatars, deported en masse by Josef Stalin in 1944 and subjected to Russian occupation 70 years later, have no illusions about Kremlin rule, but now fear the United States could push Ukraine to sign away their Black Sea homeland as part of a peace deal with Moscow.
Ukraine insists it will never recognise Russian control of occupied areas but knows it may face heavy pressure to accept onerous terms, as US president Donald Trump pursues a quick end to the war and a rapprochement with Moscow, and the US president’s officials warn Kyiv that a settlement will not include the return of all Kremlin-held land.
“Recognition of occupied Crimea as Russian territory would be a blow primarily to Ukraine’s own interests,” says Nariman Dzhelyal, a prominent Crimean Tatar journalist, activist and politician who returned to Ukraine last June after Russia sentenced him to 17 years in jail and kept him behind bars for nearly three years.
“I can predict that most Crimean Tatars, despite understanding the pressure on Ukraine, despite the desire to end the war and the desire for a peaceful life, would regard such actions by the Ukrainian authorities as betrayal,” he says.
“Ukraine may lose not only the territory, but also the long-term support of the indigenous people of this territory, who for decades have supported the territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine. I don’t think it would mean that Crimean Tatars would recognise the occupation, but Russia would definitely take advantage of this.”
Dzhelyal (44) was born in the desert city of Navoi in Uzbekistan, 3,000km east of Crimea, to a father who had been exiled with his family to Central Asia at the age of six and a mother who had been born in Soviet Russia, after Stalin deported the whole 250,000-strong Crimean Tatar nation as collective punishment for alleged collaboration with Nazi Germany.
He grew up with stories, postcards and photos of Crimea’s dramatic coastline, beaches, palm trees and historic Bakhchysarai and Yalta, but when his family returned to the peninsula in the 1980s, it was to the unprepossessing steppe town of Dzhankoi.
After studying in Odesa he went back to Crimea and became a journalist, immersing himself in the Crimean Tatar community and its concerns, and becoming friends with other young intellectuals who shared his growing commitment to activism.
[ 'We are living a different life': Crimean Tatar exiles long for homeOpens in new window ]
Like most Crimean Tatars, they supported the Maidan revolution of winter 2013-2014, which was sparked by a decision from Ukraine’s then president, Viktor Yanukovich, to align with Russia and scrap a long-planned integration deal with the European Union.
With its rich tsarist and Soviet military history and large community of retired soldiers and policemen, Crimea was Ukraine’s most pro-Russian area – only 54 per cent of residents had backed Ukrainian independence in a 1991 referendum, 30 per cent less than in any other region – and local officials loathed the pro-western Maidan movement.
“Many people in Crimea were inspired by the victory of Maidan and by Yanukovich fleeing, and the Crimean authorities were very scared,” says Dzhelyal of February 2014, when he was a member of the Mejlis, a representative body for the Crimean Tatars. “They called and said we should negotiate. But at the same time, of course, Russia was at work.”
As a new pro-western government was being formed in Kyiv, Moscow-backed groups rallied to the Kremlin’s claim that Crimea’s ethnic Russian majority must be protected from Maidan-supporting “fascists”, while Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar activists marched in defence of national unity and against interference from Russia.
The rival groups clashed outside Crimea’s parliament in Simferopol on February 26th, 2014, but pro-Ukraine protesters went home that evening believing they had foiled, or at least disrupted, the pro-Moscow camp’s plan to make a drastic announcement – perhaps a rejection of rule from Kyiv or a call for armed intervention by Moscow.
“Then the next morning we saw pictures of gunmen seizing the parliament and other official buildings,” says Dzhelyal. “And from that moment on, Crimea began to live a completely different life.”
Friday marks 11 years since Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a decree to annex Crimea, five days after a referendum overseen by his troops in which Moscow claimed that 97 per cent of people backed the switch to Kremlin rule on a turnout of 83 per cent – even though it was boycotted by nearly all ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, who made up more than a quarter of the region’s population of two million.
Russia’s growing authoritarianism was immediately felt in Crimea, where the mostly Muslim and pro-Ukraine Crimean Tatars were targeted by the security services and many thousands fled the peninsula, including nearly all political leaders of the community.
“It’s something in the genes, something very deep,” says Dzhelyal of why he and his wife decided to stay, even after Russia banned the Mejlis for “extremism” in 2016. “It’s been there since childhood, when you might not even have seen Crimea but you think of it as your homeland and feel a very deep connection to it.
“I also felt responsible, as an elected representative of my people. I had their trust and could not just pack up and leave. So we went through occupation with our people. And every day we talked to people and listened to their problems and tried to find ways to reduce the threat to Crimean Tatars.
“When I travelled outside Crimea, friends would say, ‘You’ve done enough, it’s time to leave, don’t go back.’ But I kept going back.”
Russia finally arrested Dzhelyal in September 2021 on his return home from a high-profile conference on Crimea in Kyiv, and a year later he was sentenced to 17 years in jail for his supposed role in plotting to blow up a gas pipeline.
“We understood from the start that they wanted to destroy me not just as a political leader, but to portray me as a terrorist to destroy all trust in me and in everything I had been doing,” he recalls.
Dzhelyal says he was beaten, deprived of medication and suffered other mistreatment in Russian captivity, but was not subjected to the kind of “horrible torture” inflicted on some other Crimean Tatars.
He was 5,000km from home in a jail near Russia’s border with Mongolia when he received word last June that he was to be freed in a prisoner exchange.
“I have no regrets,” he says. “I understand what I lost: nearly three years far from my family, the impossibility of returning to Crimea now; everything that happened in jail. But it was all because I was made to pay for what I believe was the right thing to do.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy recently named Dzhelyal as the country’s next ambassador to Turkey – a big regional power with strong ties to the Crimean Tatars, which also rejects Russia’s occupation and could help Ukraine resist possible US pressure to accept it.
“The positions of Turkey, Europe and the United States are all important, and they all take the Crimean Tatars into account. But Turkey does this the most,” says Dzhelyal.
“We always tell the Ukrainian authorities that the Crimean Tatars can really help build relations with Turkey, because we understand each other well. And I think my appointment as ambassador shows that the president and other people understand this.”
