Tråden om Krimhalvön

In a post this week, Oleg Leusenko says that his Crimean Tatar friends continue to be asked by the Russians they live among as some of them have since the Anschluss, “When are they deporting you? We want to move into your house.”

One ethnic Russian doctor asked his Crimean Tatar colleague what he thought the future would entail “they say that they are readying Magadan oblast for you in Russia. Are you going to be going there or will you return back to Uzbekistan” to which the Crimean Tatar doctor’s family had been deported in 1944.

Leusenko says that one Crimean Tatar woman told him that her Russian neighbor had suggested much the same. “When they deport you, we want to move into your house. It is larger than ours and will completely fit our needs.” And such Russians suggest that the Crimean Tatars by their actions have made such an outcome inevitable.

You should be glad to be in Russia, they tell the Crimean Tatars. “Don’t again become traitors and don’t betray Russia. Putin is the best.” And “You are all traitors, you are ungrateful and were against the referendum. As a result, Putin will not forgive you. It would be better if you left.”