The Crimean Tatarsan ethnic group originating from the Russian-occupied peninsula, have become relevant in the war in Ukraine.
The Atesh military movement, which means fire, has vowed to wage endless war against the Russian invaders.
Founded in September 2022, the group seeks to disrupt logistics, sabotage key targets and stoke discontent against and within Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military.
Atesh’s methods are ruthless, as demonstrated by the murder of 30 Russian soldiers in Simferopol hospitals in November 2022.
But his methods are also considered to be effective.
In February this year, the group claimed that more than 4,000 Russian soldiers had already taken an online course, at the “Atesh school”, on how to survive the war by sabotaging their own equipment.
Mustafa Dzhemilev, the Tatar leader who has been banned from his native Crimea by Russia until 2034, recently stated that “the Atesh is deeply underground, but they are working inside Crimea, exploiting targets.”
Serhii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, a Kyiv-based think tank, says: “The idea is that the occupant always feels the presence of the partisans and that they never feel safe.” .
Partisans, including the Atesh, are using a variety of methods to undermine the Russians in Crimea and even outside the region’s borders.
“The fate of Hitler’s soldiers awaits you”
When Atesh claimed responsibility for the attack on Russian soldiers in Simferopol hospitals, he warned: “Check the wards, check the morgues… you can verify this fact 300 times, but it’s the truth.”
As with so many incidents in this war, and this applies to acts committed by all sides, verifying such claims is an extremely difficult task.
What we do know is that partisan forces in the Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions recently launched a coordinated campaign with stickers and flyers against the so-called Russian world.
Furthermore, emulating a tactic adopted in previous conflicts, Ukraine reportedly dropped leaflets on Russian army positions with the message: “Russian soldier, if you don’t want to be a 21st century Nazi, then leave our land! Otherwise, the fate of Hitler’s soldiers and a Nuremberg tribunal awaits you.”
The appeal to the past is seductive for Kyiv, as guerrilla warfare played a significant role in winning both the Russian Civil War (1917-1923) and what Russia remembers as the “Great Patriotic War” (1941-1945). ).
The comparison of the current Russian army with the Nazi invaders of World War II completely contradicts Putin’s version of history.
The Kremlin accuses Ukrainian nationalists of collaborating and committing mass murder during the Nazi occupation.
Russian propaganda claims that the current war is designed to “denazify” Ukraine.
Who are the Tatars?
Those who know the history of Russia, the Ukraine and the Crimean Tatars will not be surprised by the hostility of the latter towards the latest manifestation of Moscow imperialism.
Unlike the Slavic Russians, the Crimean Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group originating from the Crimean peninsula.
The Crimean Tatar nation was formed over four centuries (c.1200-c.1650) and mixed with waves of immigrants.
Tsarina Catherine the Great annexed the Crimea in 1783, and the Russian Empire subsequently sought to “Russify” the Crimean Tatars before the 1917 revolution.
Under the rule of Joseph Stalin (1924-1953), the Soviet Union participated in the active repression of the Crimean Tatars.
This caused a number of Tatars to cooperate with the Germans following the June 1941 Nazi invasion.
Stalin accused the Crimean Tatars of treason and deported the community en masse to the Gulag.
Although some Crimean Tatars defended the Axis powers, many more served in the Red Army.
a painful past
The deportation of at least 180,000 people to Central Asia in 1944 was one of the most painful chapters in Tatar history, remembered as Sürgün (exile).
In the 1960s, research by Tatar activists estimated that approximately 100,000 of these people died (and even Soviet records admit that 30,000 Crimean Tatars died less than two years after deportations).
It was not until September 1967 that the Supreme Soviet, the highest legislative body of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), recognized that the treason charge against the entire Crimean Tatar nation had been “unreasonable”.
Thirteen years earlier, the Supreme Soviet had voted to transfer Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR from the Russian SSR.
Such action was not as controversial at the time, given that both entities were then constituent parts of the Soviet Union.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 changed all that.
Most Tatars were only allowed to return to Crimea in 1989, under the reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Tatars received no compensation for their losses, and their return home sparked tensions with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, many of whom had moved to the peninsula after 1944.
“The best Ukrainians in Crimea”
After Ukraine became independent in 1991, Tatar leaders claimed that the Kyiv authorities deliberately prevented their people from obtaining government jobs, while secretly allowing “land grabbing.”
Gradually, however, the common enemy united the Crimean and Ukrainian Tatars.
Crimean Tatars became ardent supporters of the new Ukrainian state and were sometimes nicknamed “the best Ukrainians in Crimea”.
In 1897, native Crimean Tatars made up 34.1% of that peninsula’s population.
Despite Stalin’s reversal of ethnic cleansing, in 2001 Russians made up 58% of the Crimean population, while indigenous Tatars made up only 12%.
Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 was a disastrous return to the past for the Crimean Tatars.
The Russians immediately embarked on a program of systematic tyranny. These persecutions persist to this day.
The Congress of the Crimean Tatar People, known as the Tatar Mejlis, whose president was Mustafa Dzhemilev, was banned, as were public references to Stalinist deportations.
After 2014, thousands of Tatars left Russian-occupied Crimea for Ukraine.
Tatar activist and politician Ilmi Umerov told Russia’s Federal Security Service that he “did not consider Crimea part of the Russian Federation.”
He was sent to a psychiatric hospital.
Demonstrating Ukrainian-Tatar solidarity, in November 2015 the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) passed a motion denouncing the 1944 deportations as “genocide”. It was a precedent that encouraged Latvia, Lithuania and Canada to do the same in 2019.
In 2021, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law recognizing the Crimean Tatars as one of the indigenous peoples of Ukraine.
As the current war continues, and given the significant military contribution of the Crimean Tatars, Kyiv will view the issue of self-determination of the Crimean Tatar nation more and more favorably.
Ukrainian studies scholar Rory Finnin argues that the future of Crimea is central to any deal that might follow the current war.
Ukraine lost control of Crimea in 2014, but the efforts of the Crimean Tatars in the current conflict are contributing significantly to Kyiv’s ability to avoid defeat by Russia.
*Gerald Hughes is Associate Professor in Military History and Intelligence Studies in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Click here to read the original version.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cx904qy7572o, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-08-08 03:40:09
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