Window on Eurasia: Russia Will Face ‘Serious Shocks’ if Moscow Doesn’t Return Crimea to Ukraine, Cemilev Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, January 1 – Russia itself would benefit from returning Crimea to Ukraine because otherwise it will face some “very serious shocks,” according to Mustafa Cemilev, the longtime leader of the Crimean Tatar national movement and currently Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s plenipotentiary for that nation.

 

            In an interview posted online yesterday, Cemilev said that the return of Crimea “must be accompanied by holding the guilty responsible and providing compensation for the damage inflicted” by the Russian Anschluss. “Otherwise,” he said, “the threat of a repetition of such aggression … and of a broader war will grow” (ru.krymr.com/content/article/26771478.html).

 

            In other comments, the Crimean Tatar leader said that “the main victory of the people of Ukraine” over the past year, despite all the difficulties it has faced, was “the overthrow of a mafia regime, the successful conduct of democratic presidential and parliamentary elections, and the definition of the course of the country toward the Euro-Atlantic integration.”

 

            Unfortunately, he continued, Ukraine still is confronted by the occupation of 20 percent of its territory and the burdens imposed by Russian aggression. But it is finding ever more understanding around the world of the fact that Ukraine is the innocent victim of Moscow’s policies.

 

            Cemilev noted that he personally had made 32 foreign trips in 2014: 11 to Turkey, three to the US, Poland and Belgium, two to Switzerland and France, and one each to Saudi Arabia, Germany, Northern Cyprus, Austria, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Moscovia.” He added that he had received more invitations than he could accept.

 

            He provided details on his trip to Ankara. At the invitation of that country’s leadership, he was invited three days before Vladimir Putin was scheduled to arrive and was even put up in the same hotel where the Kremlin leader was to stay. 

 

            Asked by the Turkish president what he should seek for the Crimean Tatars from Putin, Cemilev said he responded that “the main demand of course is that he leave Crimea as quickly as possible and stop sending his terrorists into the eastern regions of our country, and also immediately free our compatriots who have been arrested in Crimea … and end the bandit attacks on our Mejlis” and Crimean Tatars more generally.

 

            In addition, Cemilev said that he asked Recep Tayyip Erdogan to ask Putin why despite being the leader of a great power he was “at the same time so cowardly: why he will not allow [Cemilev], Refat chubarov and Ismet Yurksel into our motherland?” After all, Putin faces an opposition in Russia and hasn’t tried to send its leaders abroad.

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            “Why,” Cemilev continued, “has [Putin] decided to conduct himself in this way toward representatives of such a numerically small people who have been struggling for return to their motherland over the course of many decades?”

 

            The Crimean Tatar leader said he later learned that President Erdogan had discussed Crimea with Putin for 45 minutes, that the Turkish leader had presented his questions “in one form or another,” and that Putin had hemmed and hawed but not provided an answer.  This exchange found “only a week and extraordinarily ‘diplomatic’ reflection” in their press conference.

 

            It could not be otherwise, he suggested, because Turkey is not going to recognize “’the legality’ of the annexation of Crimea by Russia” because “a lawful state cannot agree to international banditism.”