Accessibility links

Subscribe
All RFE/RL sites
All RFE/RL websites
site logo site logo
Previous Next
Breaking News
Ukrainian servicemen ride in a tank close to the airport in the eastern city of Donetsk, a facility which has been the site of intense fighting for several weeks.
Ukrainian servicemen ride in a tank close to the airport in the eastern city of Donetsk, a facility which has been the site of intense fighting for several weeks.
Blogs

Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (Archive)

We have moved the Ukraine Crisis Live Blog. Sorry for any inconvenience. Please find it HERE.

19:42 27.9.2014

Here are some more tweets from RFE/RL's Robert Coalson on Lavrov's speech to the UN General Assembly:

>

19:33 27.9.2014

Sergei Lavrov is now addressing the UN General Assembly. Our correspondent is live-tweeting what he has to say:

18:02 27.9.2014

17:58 27.9.2014

17:57 27.9.2014

17:53 27.9.2014

17:52 27.9.2014

16:05 27.9.2014

16:04 27.9.2014

15:54 27.9.2014

Leonid Ragozin and Max Seddon have written an excellent piece for BuzzFeed on the plight of Crimean Tatars, which includes an extensive interview with one of their leaders Mustafa Dzhemilev (now in exile):

A legendary Soviet dissident who spent 15 years in Soviet prison camps and once went on a record 303-day hunger strike, Dzhemilev, 71, had resisted Putin’s considerable overtures to win him over only weeks earlier. Not long before the first Russian troops appeared on the Crimean peninsula in February, Dzhemilev was approached by a Russian businessman in the city of Sevastopol who said that Putin wanted to meet him. Unable to discern what Putin could want from him, Dzhemilev refused.

When Russia’s lighting-quick annexation of the peninsula shortly afterward made it clear what Putin wanted, Dzhemilev received another invitation to meet him, this time from Mintimer Shaimiev, the former longtime head of the Tatar minority in Russia. (The Tatars in Russia are related to the Crimean Tatars, but are far less independent-minded politically.) This was the first request for contact made by Russia at any level to a Ukrainian official since the invasion. Dzhemilev agreed, only to back out again after his wife asked him, “Why are you going to meet that bastard?”

Eventually, Shaimiev found a compromise and convinced Dzhemilev to talk on a special telephone in his Moscow office that, Putin said, had the power to reach him anywhere in the world at any time of day without fail. “He said, ‘We will solve anything the Ukrainians didn’t solve as soon as is humanly possible,’ like it would be heaven,” Dzhemilev said. “I was polite with him. I said, ‘We are not opposed to help, and Russia certainly owes us for [the Soviet deportations], but first you have to remove your troops.’

“Putin said, ‘That’s just what I expected you to say. Any patriot would say that. But let’s find out what the people want in the referendum,’” Dzhemilev continued. “I said, ‘The Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people has already made the decision to boycott this referendum. It’s illegal and pointless — you can’t hold referendums under occupation,’” he said.

“I told him, “Nobody’s going to recognize this referendum, and neither are we. And you talk about the Crimean people — there’s no such people. There’s the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, and there are settlers, who, of course, have the same rights as us, but not the right of self-determination you’re talking about,’” Dzhemilev said. “And he just kept saying, ‘referendum, referendum.’”

Then, Putin said that he was worried the Crimean Tatars would wind up entangled in “bloody misadventures,” and warned that Ukraine had been taken over by “fascists,” Dzhemilev said. “I told him, ‘Listen. We are very proud that we fought for our homeland all those years without spilling a drop of blood, ours or anyone else’s. But when a foreign soldier shows up on your land and starts imposing the order of a foreign country, then there’s no telling what’s going to happen.” The conversation ended there.

“I can’t go to Moscow now, so there’s no way I can reach him on that phone,” Dzhemilev said.

Read the entire article here

Load more

XS
SM
MD
LG