As Many as 50,000 Crimean Tatars have Left Their Homeland Since Russia Occupied It in 2014, Chubarov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 29 – Rufat Chubarov, head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people (an organization Moscow has declared “an extremist organization”), says that between 30,000 and 50,000 Crimeans Tatars have fled Crimea since Russia occupied it in 2014. Prior to that action, there were between 300,000 and 320,000 Crimean Tatars on the peninsula.

            A large share of those who have done so left in the fall of 2022 when Moscow sought to draft them to fight against Ukraine, Chubarov continues (youtube.com/watch?v=wg8Dgt_EyoE in written text reposted at echofm.online/news/glava-medzhlisa-krymskotatarskogo-naroda-za-period-okkupaczii-poluostrov-pokinuli-do-50-tysyach-krymskih-tatar).

            The Mejlis leader adds that Moscow has worked to flood the peninsula with ethnic Russians so as to change the ethnic composition of the population there, an action that means what Moscow has done qualifies as genocide according to the UN declaration about that crime against humanity.