My name is Liya, and I’m 21 years old. Currently, I’m an activist and volunteer who works to promote Crimean Tatar culture and spread the true history of Crimea and the Crimean Tatars among Ukrainians and foreigners.

— How did you first realise the need to lead an active civic life and start a blog?

It all began with the occupation of Crimea. I was born into a Crimean Tatar-Ukrainian family. My father is Ukrainian, originally from the Poltava region, and my mother is a Crimean Tatar. As a teenager, she returned to Crimea with her family from Uzbekistan. I grew up in a very patriotic family: from my Ukrainian great-grandmother, I constantly heard about the Holodomor, and from my Crimean Tatar great-grandmother, about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. So from childhood, I understood what Russia was all about.

When the occupation of Crimea began, I experienced it all firsthand. My family renounced Russian citizenship—we became foreigners in our own homeland and were forced to leave our homes due to the persecution of patriotic people by the occupying regime. Since 2014, we have lived in Kherson, where we regularly participated in various rallies and demonstrations against the occupation of Crimea.

In 2019, I moved to Spain, and it was that year that I had the opportunity to speak about the occupation of Crimea and the repression of the Crimean Tatars at the Royal Palace. At that time, many people in Spain learned what was happening in Crimea, as my speech was covered by the most popular media outlets in Spain. I think that’s when my active civic life began.

— You’re doing a great job. How has your advocacy work been going in Ukraine? Have you faced any obstacles, or have you, on the contrary, become a rising star on TV?

After the full-scale invasion, I started sharing information about Crimea and the Crimean Tatars in Ukrainian, because it seemed to me that hardly anyone was talking about the situation in Crimea at the time. So I took the initiative and created the Instagram page @crimea.comeback, which quickly gained popularity among Crimean residents and Ukrainians. Actually, my work is now geared more toward an international audience, because I want foreigners to associate Crimea with the Crimean Tatars, not with Russians. So I have significantly more projects abroad than in Ukraine.

— Tell us more about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, since the information in school textbooks is rather superficial.

I’d like to share some little-known facts about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars that I learned from Vozgrin’s book «The History of the Crimean Tatars».

A week before the deportation, residents of many regions of Crimea—especially Crimean Tatar women and teenagers—were forced to work on road repairs. But it became clear too late what the roads were actually being built for. Not even the Germans had thought of such cruelty—forcing people to pave the road to their own oblivion. For many Crimeans, this week of backbreaking labour became their last week in Crimea. They were destined never to see their homeland again.

Russian soldiers deliberately tormented the Crimean Tatars. They simply executed many Crimeans, especially the seriously ill who could not make it to the transport trains. They also shot anyone who resisted or refused to obey orders. The Russians officially announced that residents of certain villages would be shot if they did not gather at the assembly point on time. Many Crimean Tatars were convinced that they would simply be shot, which is why they said:

«They’re taking us to be shot. The Germans shot the Jews, and now here—the Russians—are shooting the Crimean Tatars.»

Russian soldiers began looting. Immediately after expelling the Crimean Tatars from their homes, they started ransacking entire neighbourhoods. But sometimes they couldn’t wait and looted homes right in front of the owners. From the memoirs of a deportee:

«Soldiers broke down doors, took all our belongings, and sent them by mail to Russia. They even took pillowcases. Our fellow villagers hid their valuables from the Germans in the garden, planting potatoes on top. The Germans didn’t figure it out, but the Russians found them.»

Ordinary Russians had no sympathy for the Crimean Tatars at all; on the contrary, they pelted crying children, women, and elderly people walking toward the trains with stones.

As early as 1945, the NKVD realised they had forgotten to deport the people from the Arabat Spit. Instead of preparing additional trains, the Russians loaded hundreds of Crimean Tatars onto an old boat, took it out into the middle of the Sea of Azov, and sank the vessel, drowning everyone on board. Afterwards, the executioners watched the sea’s surface for several more hours to ensure that no one had survived.

The Crimean Tatars of the Arabat Spit shared the same fate as their compatriots who remained in Crimea. The fugitives hid in caves and mountain forests, either alone or in small groups. They never ventured down to the villages, as they knew full well how they would be received by the people who had taken over their homes. The largest group known to us consisted of 40 people; it survived until 1947, when Soviet soldiers found them. The Russians were afraid to engage in combat with the Crimean Tatars, so they simply bombarded them with grenades. None of them survived.

Aji-Murat Seyt-Ali hid in the forests until 1947, despite being pursued by a special unit of about twenty men. Eventually, the Russians captured him and sent him to a concentration camp, where he spent 13 years. This was how the Soviet authorities took revenge on people whose only «crime» was their love for Crimea.

These stories only prove that the Crimean Tatars never accepted the deportation, and Crimea itself was never without its indigenous inhabitants for a single day.

— It really reminds me of… Their methods haven’t changed; they’ve just been using the same playbook for years.

The deportation also left a deep trauma in the minds of the Crimean Tatars, even among my generation. Because we know how our ancestors lived with the dream and hope of returning to their homeland, and fought so hard for it. That is exactly why many Crimean Tatars now cannot bring themselves to leave Crimea… the path back home was very difficult.

— How did you experience the occupation of Crimea in 2014?

Before the occupation and during the seizure of Crimea, my teachers began promoting the «Russian World» and hatred toward Ukraine to us. My Ukrainian language teacher scared us with stories about «Banderites who will come to beat us for speaking Russian» or «Americans who want to seize Crimea». She began to instil in us the idea that Ukraine is not our homeland. At the time, I didn’t understand why I should renounce Ukraine and become a patriot of a country that was completely foreign to me, a country that had come to our land with war.

At my school in Crimea, we could study in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian, and Crimean Tatar. Everyone had a choice. I studied in a Ukrainian-language class: all my subjects were taught in Ukrainian, we sang Ukrainian folk songs, and read Ukrainian literature and poetry. Since childhood, I considered Ukraine my only homeland and Ukrainian my native language. But after the Russians arrived, my Ukrainian class was replaced with a Russian one. The same fate befell the Crimean Tatar class. Now, only one language reigns in Crimea—Russian.

I saw Crimea begin to transform from a peaceful Ukrainian peninsula into a Russian military base: we constantly saw Russian tanks and Russian soldiers walking down our streets with weapons in their hands.

I was only 12 years old at the time, but I wanted to express my stance as well, to show that I did not support the occupation of Crimea. So my brother, my friend (a Crimean Tatar), and I decided to write «Crimea is Ukraine» in the most visible spot on our street. At the time, we didn’t think about the consequences because we were used to freedom of speech in Ukraine. And at that moment, we felt the changes even more acutely, because for the first time, we were scolded for our opinion and threatened with the FSB coming to our homes if we didn’t immediately erase that inscription.

Nine years have passed. I haven’t changed my mind. Crimea is Ukraine.

— Tell me, has anything changed since February 24? Has this propaganda intensified? Do you know anything about that?

Every year, the propaganda has intensified; it has become more intense. At school, for example, since the very beginning of the occupation of Crimea, there has been a militarisation of children, accompanied by various performances and concerts in the Soviet spirit. For all these nine years, the residents of Crimea, including children, have been indoctrinated and mentally prepared for war against Ukraine.

— Shall we talk about language? As we’ve already mentioned, language is what distinguishes the Crimean Tatars from other peoples.

In fact, very few Crimean Tatars are fluent in their native language today. The long-standing ban on the Crimean Tatar language has led UNESCO to classify it as an endangered language. The situation is very difficult right now, because since 2014, the teaching of the Crimean Tatar language in Crimea has been significantly reduced. Unfortunately, Russian dominates in Crimea, and that is precisely why many foreigners consider Crimea to be Russian. To dispel this myth, we must first and foremost revive the language of Crimea—Crimean Tatar.

— Perhaps, as a Crimean Tatar who feels her distinctiveness, you’d like to share a message to conclude?

Now more than ever, Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians must stand united. We have a common enemy—Muscovy. Our common goal is the liberation of all our lands from under the Muscovite yoke. And most importantly, we have one country—Ukraine—where we will live together after our shared victory.