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Ukraine vows never to accept Kremlin control of Black Sea peninsula: ‘Most Crimean Tatars would regard it as betrayal’

Quotes

    • 88:88
      The easiest way for Russia to attain what it wants in a different country is not through military means, but through interference and electoral process,
      CNN
      Berzina said,
    • 88:88
      I think that the fundamental point is that, as far as Trump is concerned, Ukraine is a bought and paid for vassal state and has to understand its place and accept that, essentially, America will work out some kind of a deal with Russia and then bring it back to Ukraine,
      CNN
      Galeotti said
    • 88:88
      What he’s talking about is the fact that Russia and Ukraine and Belarus share a political ancestor called Rus … but it’s very much not the same thing as any modern country. It was an early to late medieval political entity and to say that Ukraine doesn’t have a right to exist because of this shared ancestor — no country looks the same as in the 10th century,
      CNN
      said Monica White, an associate professor in Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham
    • 88:88
      Andrei Soldatov
      It’s very personal to them because they were all young KGB officers back then, and they lost their social standing, they lost a place in Russian society, they lost the country as they describe it now, and it was extremely humiliating,
      CNN
      Soldatov said
    • 88:88
      Putin was happy to throw all that away on behalf of his citizens because of higher geopolitical aims,
      CNN
      Berzina said
    • 88:88
      For the Kremlin, it’s not a war with Ukraine, it’s a war with the West, and a lot of people in Moscow don’t really believe that they can get any kind of lasting agreement with the US,
      CNN
      Soldatov told CNN
    • 88:88
      Putin is an opportunist. He likes creating dynamic, chaotic situations, which throw up a whole variety of opportunities. And then he can then just pick which opportunity appeals to him, and he can change his mind,
      CNN
      Galeotti said
    • 88:88
      Mark Galeotti
      Putin went into Ukraine thinking that it will be an easy, quick operation. Three years on, he controls 20% of Ukraine, but at terrible, terrible cost. I mean, essentially the Russians are losing. The thing though is that the Ukrainians are losing faster,
      CNN
      leading Russia analyst Mark Galeotti told CNN
    • 88:88
      After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia lost its connection with the ancestral Orthodox lands and I think part of Putin’s project is to try to bring back that thread connecting 10th century Rus with this pure orthodox continuity,
      CNN
      White said
    • 88:88
      Russia wants to be at all the important tables – so whatever comes next, maybe it doesn’t have to mean territorial conquest in Europe, but I think it does have to be in a starring role in the more powerful bloc, if it sees that to include China or Iran or others, a bloc that is defined by its willingness to disrupt and destabilize,
      CNN
      White added
    • 88:88
      They think they can win some tactical battles but that he would not give them what they really want, which is a complete rearrangement of security arrangements in Europe,
      CNN
      he said
    • 88:88
      That doesn’t work within Russia’s understanding of its own exceptionalism. It is the largest country in the world, the richest in (natural) resources, so how can it simply be one of the players?”
      CNN
      she said
    • 88:88
      No matter what Trump and Putin think they can arrange this week or this year, many people in Europe now find Putin fundamentally untrustworthy,
      CNN
      she said
    • 88:88
      Then the next morning we saw pictures of gunmen seizing the parliament and other official buildings,
      Irish Times
      says Dzhelyal
    • 88:88
      The positions of Turkey, Europe and the United States are all important, and they all take the Crimean Tatars into account. But Turkey does this the most,
      Irish Times
      says Dzhelyal
    • 88:88
      Many people in Crimea were inspired by the victory of Maidan and by Yanukovich fleeing, and the Crimean authorities were very scared,
      Irish Times
      says Dzhelyal of February 2014, when he was a member of the Mejlis, a representative body for the Crimean Tatars
    • 88:88
      It’s something in the genes, something very deep,
      Irish Times
      says Dzhelyal of why he and his wife decided to stay, even after Russia banned the Mejlis for “extremism” in 2016.
    • 88:88
      We understood from the start that they wanted to destroy me not just as a political leader, but to portray me as a terrorist to destroy all trust in me and in everything I had been doing,
      Irish Times
      he recalls
    • 88:88
      Nariman Dzhelyal
      Recognition of occupied Crimea as Russian territory would be a blow primarily to Ukraine’s own interests,
      Irish Times
      says Nariman Dzhelyal, a prominent Crimean Tatar journalist, activist and politician who returned to Ukraine last June after Russia sentenced him to 17 years in jail and kept him behind bars for nearly three years
    • 88:88
      I can predict that most Crimean Tatars, despite understanding the pressure on Ukraine, despite the desire to end the war and the desire for a peaceful life, would regard such actions by the Ukrainian authorities as betrayal,
      Irish Times
      he says