Crimean Tatars head for rally in outskirts of Simferopol

May 18, 2014
Interfax
Source: Russia Beyond the Headlines


Part of Crimean Tatars plan to hold an unauthorized rally commemorating the victims of the deportation of their people in 1944 near a mosque in the outskirts of Simferopol.

Hundreds of people are heading for the rally carrying flags the family emblem of the dynasty of Crimean khans, an Interfax correspondent reports.

Earlier on Sunday flowers were brought to monuments to the victims of the deportation. People came there in small groups. There were no more than 100 people at a time at the memorial near the railway station in Simferopol.

For More Info:  http://rbth.com/news/2014/05/18/crimean_tatars_head_for_rally_in_outskirts_of_simferopol_36734.html.

Ukraine agrees to host NATO war games

April 1, 2014 
Source:Yahoo News

Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday approved a series of joint military exercises with NATO countries that would put US troops in direct proximity to Russian forces in the annexed Crimea peninsula.

"This is a good opportunity to develop our armed forces," acting defence minister Mykhailo Koval told Verkhovna Rada lawmakers ahead of the 235-0 vote.

The decision came as NATO foreign ministers gathered in Brussels for a two-day meeting dominated by concern over the recent buildup of Russian forces near Crimea that US officials estimate had at one point reached about 40,000 troops.

NATO has sought to reinforce its eastern frontier after Russia's takeover of Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula and amid concerns about Kremlin's emboldened foreign policy.

Russia on Monday reported pulling back a battalion of about 500 to 700 soldiers from the border region in a move that German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called "a small sign that the situation is becoming less tense".

Ukraine is not a NATO member and its new Western-backed leaders have vowed not to push for closer relations with the Brussels-based military alliance -- a bloc that has been viewed with deep mistrust by Moscow since the Cold War.

But the ex-Soviet nation did form a "distinctive partnership" with the Alliance in 1997 and has been staging joint exercises with its state members ever since.

The exercises approved on Tuesday would see Ukraine conduct two sets of military exercises with the United States this summer -- Rapid Trident and Sea Breeze -- that have prompted disquiet in Russia in previous years.

Ukraine is planning two additional manoeuvres with NATO member Poland as well as joint ground operations with Moldova and Romania.

The Sea Breeze exercises have particularly irritated Moscow because they had on occasion been staged in Crimea -- the home of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Those manoeuvres have in more recent years been moved to the Black Sea port of Odessa where Ukraine also has a naval base.

An explanatory note accompanying the Tuesday bill says that the naval section of Sea Breeze would this time be conducted over a 25-day span between July and October out of two Odessa ports and "along the waters of the Black Sea".

 

Land Key as Tatars discuss future plans

March 28,2014
Source: mail.com

SIMFEROPOL, Crimea (AP) — As armed pro-Russian forces spread out across Crimea, Mustafa Maushev joined his Tatar neighbors on a nightly vigil to keep intruders off their property.

Almost exactly 70 years ago, Tatars were expelled from their homeland as a result of one of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's merciless mass deportations of perceived enemies of the state. Decades later, as the Soviet Union was crumbling, many returned and slowly reclaimed their place.

Following a March referendum that ended with Crimea breaking away from Ukraine and being swallowed up by Russia, disquiet is stirring that the Tatars' hard-fought hold over their land could be lost once again.

On Saturday, 250 delegates are gathering in the southern Crimean town of Bakchysarai for a traditional Tatar Qurultay congress to decide whether to hold a referendum on yielding to absorption by Russia or clinging to their Ukrainian citizenship. The former choice might be easier, but few have any illusions.

"Russia is offering us all sorts of nice things. But we understand the essence of the Russian empire, because we are its victims," said Zevget Kutumerov, a Tatar with extensive experience of dealing with land issues. "If (Russian President Vladimir) Putin says a word, they'll pass any law tomorrow. That's what we're afraid of."

One of the Tatars' greatest problems is their legally tenuous control over the land on which they live.
Maushev, a neighborhood delegate to the kurultai, arrived penniless from Uzbekistan in 1989 and was forced to scrabble and find a home for himself.

Linking up with about 100 other homeless Tatars, he pitched a tent in a field on the outskirts of the Crimean capital, Simferopol. Each settler built a "vremyanka," or makeshift hut, which provided just enough shelter for squatters guarding the land overnight.

"About 30 or 40 people kept watch here at night so that nobody would trespass, nobody would come and break down the vremyankas," Maushev said. By the community's own estimates, Tatars on average own two-fifths as much land as ethnic Russians in Crimea. While Tatars account for only 12 percent of the peninsula's population, space still remains tight for younger generations raising large families.

 After a decade-long moratorium in which no group settlements were founded, Crimean Tatars organized thousands of land seizures in 2006, as the children of the first wave of migrants grew up, made families, and felt cramped in the old settlements.

"I was living in an apartment with my mother, grandmother, everyone — female warfare, every day," said Sedomed Setumerov, who lives about a kilometer down the road from Maushev in a newer settlement. Yet regardless of how the kurultai dictates Tatars should determine their fealty, whatever victories the community has scored in securing land may yet be lost. Many Tatars worry that Russian laws will limit their ability to press for the government to recognized their land ownership.

In Russia, heavy fines are levied on those who participate in unsanctioned protests, which often end within minutes as demonstrators are swept brutally away. Setumerov moved here in 2010, and now lives in a self-built house with his wife and his three young children. The vast field around them, empty but for the identical but crumbling vremyanki on equal plots of land, gives it the air of a ghost town.

They have lived for three years without running water or electricity, using a generator that has enough gusto for a few lamps and a television but not for a washing machine. They are waiting for the government to recognize them as the owners of the land, which will allow them to use electricity and water from the public grid.

Setumerov acknowledges the wait may be long — especially now that Russia has annexed Crimea — but says it's worth it. "I'd still rather live in a vremyanka," he said. "At least it's quiet and the air is fresh."

Crimea's Tartars condemn annexation,seek autonomy

March 24,2014
Source: Mail.com

BAKCHYSARAI, Crimea (AP) — Leaders of Crimea's Tatar minority gathered Saturday to condemn Russia's annexation of the peninsula and appealed to international bodies for recognition as an autonomous group.

Tatars, an ethnically Turkic and mainly Muslim group that was subjected to mass deportation from their native Crimea by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1944, gathered to forge a collective response to Russia's absorption of their native region.

Decisions on whether to accept Russian citizenship and possible participation in a Moscow-loyal government were deferred as the community further contemplates its options. But the forum of about 250 delegates underscored difficulties Russia will face in integrating a community that resisted annexation and largely boycotted the March 16 referendum to join Russia.

According to the most recent Ukrainian national census, carried out in 2001, the 245,000-strong Tatar community accounted for 12 percent of Crimea's population. But anecdotal evidence of higher birth rates and a continued return of Tatars from exile in Central Asia suggest those figures may have grown markedly since then.

The Kremlin decision to annex this strategic Black Sea region, which has a large Russian majority, was backed by rhetoric of national self-determination, as Moscow argued that pro-Russian Crimeans had the right to break away from Ukraine.

"Recently, all decisions (by Russia) have been based on the presupposed right of every nation to self-determination," said Refat Chubarov, the leader of the Crimean Tatar governing body. "One must now conclude that the Crimean Tatar people also have that right."

Chubarov also appealed to the international community to recognize the Crimean Tatars as a "national territorial autonomy," but fell short of demanding a referendum on independence or allegiance to Ukraine.
Yet the vociferous tone of the delegates who spoke demonstrated the lingering rage within the Tatar community. "Russia turned us out three times," Aishe Setmetova, an elderly woman in a knit sweater, bellowed from the stage. "They think of us as worthless objects. I do not believe in Russia."

Crimea's Tatars began to return to their native peninsula in the late 1980s with the breakup of the Soviet Union. The population is growing fast compared to the ageing Russian population and presents the Kremlin with a long-term problem of integration.

Russia and the local Crimean government have assured Tatars that their rights will be fully respected on the peninsula. Tatar is to be elevated to one of the three state languages and the community has been given loose assurances it will be guaranteed a prominent political status.

But Tatars, who ruled the peninsula from the 15th century until the Russian Empire took it over in the 18th century, remain deeply skeptical of Moscow's intentions. "We, as the native people of this land, shouldn't collaborate with an occupying power," congress delegate Ilver Ametov said.

"Ukraine, too, wasn't our home, but at least it was a democracy," he said. "There's a story we have about the dog who ran to Moscow because things were better over there, but ran back to Ukraine because at least here he's allowed to bark."

Putin puts troops in western Russia on alert in drill

February 26, 2014
By Steve Gutterman
Source: Yahoo News

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin ordered an urgent drill to test the combat readiness of his armed forces across western Russia on Wednesday, flexing Moscow's military muscle amid tension with the West over Ukraine.

Russia said the exercises were not linked to events in Ukraine, where the ouster of a president who turned his back on the European Union and sought closer ties with Moscow has raised worries in the West over possibility of military intervention.

Putin has ordered several such surprise drills in different Russian regions since he returned to the presidency in 2012, saying the military must be kept on its toes, but the crisis in the neighboring nation gave them added geopolitical resonance.

"In accordance with an order from the president of the Russian Federation, forces of the Western Military District were put on alert at 1400 (0500 ET) today," the Interfax news agency quoted Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as saying.

Shoigu said the training drills were not linked to events in Ukraine, and Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov said they had been previously planned. He said they would involve about 150,000 military personnel.

The western district encompasses most of western Russia and borders Ukraine, which lies between NATO nations and Russia.

Forces must "be ready to bomb unfamiliar testing grounds" as part of the drill, Shoigu told a Defence Ministry meeting.

Putin has made no public comment on Ukraine since President Viktor Yanukovich was driven from power over the weekend. His ouster came after months of political turmoil that began when he spurned deals with the European Union and sought to improve ties with Russia.

The United States and European nations have warned Russia against military intervention in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that Putin has called a "brother nation" and wants to be part of a Eurasian Union he is building in the region.

Russian officials have said Moscow will not interfere in Ukraine, while accusing the West of doing so. Interfax cited the speaker of the upper parliament house, Valentina Matviyenko, as saying on Wednesday it would not use force.

But Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that Russia's interests and its citizens in Ukraine were under threat, language reminiscent of statements justifying Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008, when he was president.

Shoigu said the drill would be conducted in two stages, ending on March 3, and also involved the command centers of Russia's Air and Space Defence forces, paratroops and long-range aviation as well as some troops in central Russia.

In the two-day first stage, military units would be brought to "the highest degree of combat readiness" and would be deployed to testing areas on land and sea, Interfax quoted Shoigu as saying.

The second stage would include tactical exercises and involve warships from the Northern and Baltic Fleets, he said, and some warplanes would move to combat airfields.

Descriptions of the exercises did not mention the Black Sea Fleet, which is based in Sevastopol in Crimea. Tension over Ukraine's turmoil is high because of the fleet's presence and the region's large ethnic Russian population.

In separate comments, Shoigu said Russia was "carefully watching what is happening in Crimea" and was taking unspecified measures to ensure the security of the facilities and arsenals of the Black Sea Fleet, state-run RIA reported.

Shoigu said the drill would also test the counter-terrorism measures in place at military units. Russian officials have referred to some of the Ukrainian opposition forces whose protests pushed Yanukovich from power as "terrorists".

(Writing by Steve Gutterman and Thomas Grove, editing by Larry King)