Inside Putin's brutal 'genocide' and the heroic fight to resist Russian terror

A leader of the Crimean Tatars has accused Vladimir Putin of continuing Stalin's "genocidal policy" against his people. Crimea has been under Russian control for 11 years, since it was illegally invaded by the Kremlin in 2014. Its population of some 2.4 million people prior to the invasion was made up of an eclectic mix of Russians (60%), Ukrainians (24%) and Tatars (12%), as well as a number of other minorities.

However, since Putin annexed the peninsula, the Tatars have been brutally repressed, forcing many to flee their ancestral homelands. The Kremlin has launched a sweeping Russification policy that seeks to eradicate any traces of minority cultures and identities. Tatars and other ethnic groups have found their freedom of expression and religion curtailed, and are now facing the danger of being displaced by an influx of Russians. The Kremlin has encouraged its citizens to move to the island, with around one million arriving from the mainland since 2014.

The Tatars, in particular, have been branded as a "disloyal" group by the Kremlin, with many summarily arrested and tortured in prison.

Refat Chubarov - the chairman of the Crimean Tatar People's Parliament (Mejlis) - told the Express that repressions against his people who remained on the peninsula were getting worse.

"Crimean Tatars are the target of repression," he explained. "People are being abducted, and dozens have been found dead."

He said the occupying authorities currently had unlawfully detained over 250 people on politically motivated charges. "Two-thirds, some 66% of this number, are Crimean Tatars, who make up only 13% of the total population," he said.

Tatar communities were also disproportionately targeted in the initial round of military conscription in September 2022. "We saw that in many places where military summons were brought, Crimean Tatars made up 60-70%, and in some cases even 80% of the local communities," he explained.

Mobilisation proved extremely unpopular and risked causing social unrest, so the Russians changed tactics. "They started allocating land to anyone willing to sign a contract with the Russian Army. They promise them our land by the sea," Chubarov said.

He added: "All this indicates that the goal of the Russian occupiers is the complete cleansing of Crimean Tatars. Putin is continuing the genocidal policy of the Soviet Union. He wants to finish what Stalin failed to accomplish."

Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar population (some 200,000) in 1944 for alleged collaboration with the Nazis during World War 2. In the wake of this forced displacement, primarily to Uzbekistan and other Central Asian republics, up to 46% of them perished within two years, succumbing to malnutrition and disease.

A 1967 Soviet decree cleared the Crimean Tatars of all charges but did nothing to facilitate their return, nor to compensate them for damages incurred. Until almost the very last days of the USSR they were not allowed to return to Crimea.

Despite the increasingly brutal repression, Tatars, along with Ukrainians, have organised themselves into a resistance group that is helping Kyiv's army to carry out attacks on Russian military targets.

Atesh - meaning "Fire" - was formed in the immediate aftermath of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The partisans played a key role in helping Ukraine's military destroy the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in September 2023.

Their agents risk torture and death if they are captured by the Russians, and say it is becoming increasingly more difficult to carry out operations. "The heightened counterintelligence regime poses challenges to our work," they said. "Sometimes it's difficult to even deliver explosives. Moreover, Russian special services are constantly trying to penetrate our ranks."

The group says its members are motivated by a desire to gain revenge against the Russians "for their lost loved ones and for those held hostage by the Putin regime."

They claim to have representatives right across Russia, including in the major cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and say they are forging alliances with other Tatar ethnic minorities inside the country.

Many Western military experts doubt Ukraine has the ability to retake Crimea, with the Trump White House already indicating it is prepared to recognise the peninsula as de jure Russian territory.

Refat Chubarov, however, struck a defiant tone, insisting the Russians will be driven out of the Tatars' ancestral homelands.

"I know that we will definitely return to Crimea. I find the answer in the fact that it is impossible for humanity not to restore the power of justice; otherwise, there will be chaos. I believe that the Russians will leave Crimea, and the territorial integrity of Ukraine will be restored. In this world, reason and law still play a major role."