Ukrainian officials are pleased that the United Nations has acknowledged that Russia is an occupying power in Crimea and that it has promoted demographic change there in violation of the Geneva Convention. But Ukrainian experts are concerned that the UN report understates just how far Moscow has gone.
The report, which was circulated last summer but only formally promulgated earlier this week, represents welcome recognition of and attention to Russia’s crimes in occupying Crimea.
The UN report says that “no fewer than 109” Crimean residents were forcibly deported in 2017-2018, but this is smaller than the more than 360 cases the Crimean Human Rights Group reports, and represents “only the tip of the iceberg” of Moscow’s efforts to get current residents to leave and to replace them with ethnic Russians.
The Ukrainian ministry for social policy says that as of August 2018, there were 33,500 forced resettlers from Crimea, but the Crimean Tatar Resource Center’s Eskender Bariyev says that the minimum figure is at least 40,000. And the number will certainly rise given Russian pressure on ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars to leave.
According to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, the number of ethnic Russians who have come to the Ukrainian peninsula is “significantly higher” than the UN report says, and amounts to “about 200,000,” most of whom are military personnel, government employees, or judges and other court officials.
He says this process has been speeded up by officials who arrange for arriving Russians to be paid more than departing Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars for the same job.
The true size of Russian efforts to change the demography of occupied Crimea is indicated by the following statistic: “the flood of Russians resettling in Crimea is so large that it is compensating for negative [demographic] trends on the peninsula.” As Crimean officials admit, mortality rates are 60 percent higher in Crimea than elsewhere in Russia and rising.
What is most shameful about this situation is that Russian rights activists, queried by Deutsche Welle concerning the findings of the UN report, refused to comment on all this, citing “’geopolitical” concerns or saying that questions about demography in Crimea were “beyond the scope” of their activities.
Read More:
- Russia’s replacement of population in occupied Crimea violates Geneva Contention – UN report
- Since Anschluss, Moscow engaging in slow-motion deportation of Crimean Tatars, Kashapov says
- Russia’s deportation of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars from occupied Crimea a “neo-imperial policy tool” – report
- Russians moving into occupied Crimea now form one-fifth of its population
- Russia’s transformation of ethnic mix in occupied Crimea an act of genocide
- ‘The disappeared’ – the hidden part of Russia’s hybrid deportation of the Crimean Tatars
- Putin repeating Stalin’s genocide with ‘new hybrid deportation of Crimean Tatars’
- Russian occupiers continue to destroy history and culture of Crimean Tatars
- Putin repeating Stalin’s genocide with ‘new hybrid deportation of Crimean Tatars’
- Chronology of the annexation of Crimea
- Hacked military docs reveal how the Russian 18th motorized brigade invaded Crimea
- 74 years on, Russian genocide of Crimean Tatars continues
- Moscow forming ‘death squads’ in occupied Crimea and elsewhere
- New UNGA resolution: Crimea temporarily occupied by Russia, Russia must release political prisoners & stop repressions
- Military base instead of a resort: Crimea four years after the occupation
