Russians in Crimea face the harsh realities of war

- There is growing anger in Crimea because people thought the war would be far away. Now Russian missiles are falling on beaches full of tourists. People are starting to realize that Russia won't protect them – says Isa Akayev, commander of the "Crimea" battalion.

Long, gray beard. Tired, swollen eyes. We meet Isa Akayev (real name Nariman Bilialov) in Warsaw. The "Crimea" battalion he commands has just returned for rotation from the front in the Kharkiv region.

- Earlier we were in Avdiivka, before that in Bakhmut, and before that in Kherson. The battalion reports to military intelligence, so our task is reconnaissance, diversion, and storm actions. They send us where the heaviest fighting is taking place, and the infantry needs support – says Akayev.

Akayev will use his free time to meet with his family, who left for Turkey after the start of the Russian invasion. Hence the stop in Warsaw.

- I had many reasons not to go and fight: age (59 years), illnesses (diabetes), children (eleven). Any one of these alone would have been enough to avoid mobilization. But one argument outweighed everything. The Russians forced successive generations of Crimean Tatars to wander. My grandparents were deported. I returned to Crimea and built a house, but my children are growing up in a foreign country. History has come full circle again. This must end. Step by step, we will reach Crimea.

Tatiana Kolesnychenko, Wirtualna Polska: Russia shells Ukraine every day, killing civilians, but until now, all of Ukraine's strikes on targets in Crimea did not cause casualties among the local population. It wasn't until the end of June that missile fragments fell on a beach in Sevastopol, killing five people and wounding 150. There was no air raid siren, and even if there had been, there were no shelters nearby. What do they say about this in Crimea?

Isa Akayev: Let me clarify. It is now known that the missile that fell on the beach was from Russian air defense. For some reason, instead of destroying our missile, it went off course and fell on the beach, killing civilians.

First, the people who were on the beach then were not locals. I lived in Crimea for 30 years, and please believe me, during the season, no one has time to sunbathe by the sea. These were vacationers, Russians who came on holiday. They are convinced that the war is somewhere far away in Ukraine and does not concern them.

So it's no wonder they are now angry. They saw that the authorities don't care about their safety, and the weapon, which they often describe as "analogous niet" (from Russian - unique - ed.), is, like everything in their country, big talk with no substance.

I don't know if they realized what you're talking about, but they certainly heard on TV that it was an American missile. And now they have increasingly begun to place military equipment in tourist-frequented areas. This puts Ukraine in a dilemma: consider civilian casualties or give up attacks?

Not necessarily. The missiles we use to attack targets in Crimea and Russia are modern and precise. They have a GPS system that is constantly connected to a satellite, so we can adjust their flight at any time. From what I know, the missile we fired that day hit the target.

However, it is quite obvious that the Russians do not value their own people. We spent the entire winter in Bakhmut. Behind the building we were defending, there were about twenty bodies of their soldiers. Not once in four months did they try to retrieve them.

Another common example on the front is shelling their own people. A fight ensues, the Russians can't withstand the pressure, they start to retreat, and then their artillery flies in. Between the trenches, it is 55-110 yards. They kill both ours and theirs. For them, it doesn't matter. The end justifies the means. So if they treat their own like this, how would they treat us? We are nothing to them.

Let's go back to the missile attack. You said they were vacationers. What are the sentiments among the locals?

Those waiting for the liberation of Crimea say they fry chebureki (traditional dish, large fried dumplings filled with meat - ed.) when something explodes in Crimea. Others feel somewhat in a clinch.

In the first years after the annexation, there were more tourists in Crimea, and local budgets were swelled with money. Some residents of Crimea fell for it, and when they woke up, it was too late. Under Ukraine, they could say what they wanted, and now they are even afraid to think. In Russia, they are hated because as long as money flowed to Crimea, other regions didn't receive any at all. On the other hand, people fear Ukraine because they now see that Russia may not necessarily protect them.

So in the last two years, euphoria has gradually turned into confusion, fear, and for some, disappointment with Russia because none of the grand promises were fulfilled. It was naive to expect anything at all. For Russia, Crimea is a symbol of their imperialism. For centuries they erased the indigenous peoples from its history. The deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 was the last act.

You were already born in Uzbekistan. Who in the family maintained the traditions?

The most stories were told by my grandmother, my mother's mother. She was an educated woman, she studied in Turkey. She always said that we are Crimean Tatars and Muslims, and the Russians are our enemies. She chased me away when I befriended Russian children. One day I came home from school bursting with pride. I became a pioneer! I had a red tie. Grandma got angry and said: Take it off! You are not a dog to wear a collar.

At the time I didn't understand, I was still a child. Now, in hindsight, I know I didn't lose my roots only thanks to her.

What did she tell you about the deportation?

She remembered that day very well. It was early in the morning, around 3 a.m. NKVD officers kicked the door in and barged into the house. They gave them less than 10 minutes to get dressed and gather essentials. My mother was barely two years old then. Then everyone was herded into cattle cars. They traveled for three weeks, thousands of miles from home.

When they reached Uzbekistan, they had to walk 25 miles in the heat to get to their place of residence. It was a large barrack, something similar to what was in German death camps.

According to various estimates, between 40 and 50 percent of Crimean Tatars died during the transport and in the first years of exile.

My uncle told me that sometimes they would spend the night at the cemetery. Hunger, disease, and back-breaking work wore people down. My uncle and others dug so many graves during the day that they didn't have the strength to go home.

Those who survived became apathetic. First, when they were driven from their homes, they thought everyone would be shot. Then for years, they believed they would be allowed to return to those homes. They adapted to this temporariness. My grandfather was a realist. In the 1920s, he was dekulakized and sent to slave labor. He knew they faced the same fate after the deportation.

At first, it was very hard because for a day's work in the field, my grandfather and his two eldest sons received a flatbread each made of sorghum (grain, which was then used as cattle feed - ed.). So, they had three flatbreads a day for a nine-person family. Then my grandfather secured a piece of land, built a house, planted an orchard, and a garden. Others wondered why he was doing this, but he knew they wouldn't return home.

After Stalin's death, things got a little easier. But until the 1970s, the Crimean Tatars were not allowed to leave the deportation territories. Many lived in barracks the whole time.

Did your grandmother miss Crimea?

Very much. She only spoke Crimean Tatar. She talked about summers in Crimea. That it smells of ripe pears and the sea. Sounds like cicadas. And the sand, when it gets very hot, becomes like powder that slips between your toes. She loved Crimea and missed it very much.

At that time, I couldn't even imagine that history would repeat itself and I would tell my children about Crimea the same way. Perhaps it is human nature that you start to appreciate your homeland only when you lose it. For me, 2014 was a turning point. I really didn't want to leave Crimea, condemning my children to what I went through, but we had no choice. That's when I realized how much I love our culture and tradition.

When did you first go to Crimea?

In 1979, when I was 14 years old. I went to Eupatoria to the Young Lenin sanatorium. That's when I first saw the Crimean Khan's Palace in Bakhchisarai, Sevastopol, and the mosque in Eupatoria.

On the one hand, I was delighted, but on the other, I felt ashamed of my origin for the first time. During one of the tours, the guide presented the Crimean Tatars as savages, parasites who constantly looted Russia, so it had no choice but to occupy Crimea. Not a word about deportation, starvation, repression, or the fact that the Slavic population appeared here each time we, the indigenous people, were massacred.

They wanted to erase all traces of us. They changed 80 percent of the names from Tatar to Russian. Not a single cemetery remained. There are only five architectural monuments of the Crimean Tatars left in all of Crimea. They destroyed everything. In the 70 years since the deportation, our language and culture practically did not develop. They were replaced by everything Russian.

Do you speak Crimean Tatar?

At a very basic level. Only as much as I remember from my grandmother. In childhood, I spoke only Crimean Tatar with her, and when the time came to go to school, it turned out that I didn't speak Russian at all. They put me in an Uzbek class, and my mother was devastated. She cried because she knew that without knowing Russian, I had no future. Finally, her friend, a teacher, took pity on me and practiced with me. Then my grandmother died, and gradually the Russian language replaced Tatar at home.

My parents didn't remember the deportation; they were too young, but they carried the trauma and fear all their lives. Their way of living was: adapt and don't stick out. My mother was panicked when I started participating in the Crimean Tatar national movement.

That was in the 80s?

Yes, just after I returned from the army. As a representative of an unreliable nation, I did not end up in a combat unit but in the so-called construction battalion. This battalion theoretically should have dealt with the construction of military facilities and fortifications. Instead, we built vacation resorts for the communist elite.

At that time, glasnost was beginning to be talked about in the Soviet Union, and we were talking about returning home. My mother was terrified, begging me to stay away. She said: They will never give us Crimea; blood will be shed.

And what did you do?

I returned to Crimea in the 90s. I had a romantic vision: I'll find a job, get a place in a hostel, as it was everywhere in the USSR. And then, slowly, slowly, I'll save up for a plot of land, build a house. I had just graduated from a construction institute, so I had higher education and the highest qualifications as a high-altitude assembler. I went to a building materials factory, they were happy, said they would hire me immediately...

But?

But I pulled out my documents, and the charm disappeared. The director honestly told me they were ordered not to hire Tatars returning to Crimea. I had to get registration first. The lady at the counter said that without documents from the local draft office, she wouldn't give me registration. So I went to the recruitment office, and they said: we won't issue documents without proof of employment. And the circle closed again.

We were all in the same situation then. A lot of educated people because parents tore their veins out so we would finish college and have a better life. But in Crimea, there was no work for us. Everyone managed as best they could. I knew a woman who taught English, German, and French at the University of Samarkand. When she returned to Crimea, she fried and sold chebureki in the bazaar.

I managed to get a job illegally in a quarry as a loader. And that was only thanks to the fact that the quarry director was a Crimean Greek who understood what we were going through.

Did you visit your grandparents' former estate?

Yes, uncles took me there. It's near Simferopol, the village used to be called Mamasha, and now Orlovka. There used to be a large house, a few kilometers from the beach. After the deportation and confiscation of the estate, it was made into a public library. Then, when talks about the return of property began in the 90s, someone demolished the building. But the orchard was left. Tens of pear trees that my grandfather planted with his own hands, which my grandmother spoke of with such desperate nostalgia. Now it is someone's private property.

Many Crimean Tatars still have property ownership documents, which would now be worth a fortune. But even long after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Crimea was already part of Ukraine, the new authorities also did not want to hear about the return of property.

There has never been Ukrainian authority in Crimea. The autonomy of the peninsula allowed local officials to live in Ukraine but consider themselves part of Russia. They and the new influx of people brought in to replace the deported Crimean Tatars always believed that the attachment to Ukraine was a mistake that would one day be corrected. So a negative message about us always flowed to Kyiv, and local authorities did everything their way.

Kyiv also was not very eager to recognize the Crimean Tatars. I remember the 2000s very well and how television constantly showed materials portraying the Tatars as bandits who engage in so-called "self-seizure" of land in Crimea.

At that time, we called it "self-return," or the independent return of our lands. We always assumed that we should only take lands for which the authorities would not fight to the death. So we waited until they harvested and then carried out the seizure. Someone was always there, regardless of rain, snow, or heat. Then we divided the field into plots and started building. That's how entire settlements of Crimean Tatars were built.

I have fond memories of those times. The situation was extreme, and we were very united. We all helped each other, living one dream – to rebuild our nation.

But then came 2014, and some Crimean Tatars went out to protest against the annexation. Some were beaten, kidnapped, killed, but others began to collaborate with the occupiers?

People relaxed too much. I always said that we must not assimilate to Russians. We will never be the same, and by rejecting our roots, we will lose respect for ourselves. Once every year on May 18th (the day of deportation), Simferopol would empty because it knew we were going to protest in the city center. People were a bit afraid of our anger.

Then came the moment when we built houses, started businesses, and our lives began to settle. And then it suddenly turned out that some Crimean Tatars were once again succumbing to Russian imperialism. They imitated them, and some even started justifying deportation. Then, when we went out to demonstrate, people looked at us like troublemakers who didn't know what they wanted. And again, history came full circle. Our great-grandfathers starved to death in the 1920s because of collectivization. Grandparents died in exile in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and my children and I had to flee from persecution. Each generation experienced harm from the Russians. But I believe this will end.

I dream of a day when I return to my three-room apartment in downtown Simferopol and tell the FSB officers living there: you have 24 hours to leave.

Did they inform you somehow that they were occupying your apartment?

No. We left in a hurry, at the last minute. I only managed to pack my wife, seven children, and a few things for the road into the car. All their toys, clothes, my library, which I collected my whole life – everything was left in the apartment.

Over time, the Russians found out that I fight against them, and their law allows for full confiscation of property in such cases – apartment, house, business. So after two years, they came in, took the doors off, and put in new ones. They surrounded the whole district with a wall and checkpoints because the headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine was nearby, which became an FSB office.

Last year, before the Ukrainian counteroffensive, there were many optimistic forecasts of the liberation of Crimea. Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops haven't even broken through the Russian defense lines in Zaporizhzhia. Now the liberation of Crimea seems even more unrealistic.

Many factors contributed to this. First of all, the lack of weapons, but also that the Russians were prepared for our attack. Now, assessing the situation soberly, I think we won't liberate Crimea for another two years.

What should happen during that time?

First of all, we need to tighten sanctions, depriving Russia of the ability to buy components necessary for missile production and other weapons. Secondly, aviation. We need to regain control of the sky; having fighter jets will also allow us to attack Russian military infrastructure more precisely. This is a war of attrition, and we need to persevere and weaken Russia.