Ukrainian political scientist wrote Trump "Crimean memo"

14 July 2018, 06:33 | Policy
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On June 29, US President Donald Trump told reporters that during the July meeting with Putin, the subject of their discussion could be the recognition of the illegal seizure of the Crimea by Russia. Since then, the White House has backed off and insisted that US policy has not changed. Nevertheless, the US president and his charges may come in handy a reminder, writes political analyst Taras Berezovets.

In March 2014, thousands of Ukrainian citizens automatically became citizens of Russia, regardless of whether they wanted it or not. When Russia illegally annexed the Crimea, and anyone who was born on the peninsula, or anyone with a Crimean residence permit, was granted Russian citizenship. At least 3,500 Ukrainian citizens have retained their passports and renounced Russian citizenship. After 4 years, their choice seems heroic.

Crimean and Russian TV channels feverishly predicted the imminent demise of Ukraine, and the inhabitants of the peninsula were in constant fear. The scars left by agents of the "Russian Spring" were also more than real. Then it was not customary to talk about missing friends or calls for interrogations. Moreover, it was unsafe: those who asked many questions expected an unpleasant fate.

At best, they were dismissed, at worst, they could call Ivan Franko's boulevard, 13, into a building where the administration of the State Security Committee of the USSR in the Crimea earlier operated for decades, and then was the SBU.

Since the spring of 2014, the office of the Russian FSB in the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol also, ironically, was located on the boulevard of Ivan Franko, 13, named after one of the main writers of Ukraine. It is noteworthy that the occupation authorities preserved all the monuments of the great Ukrainian writers, such as Taras Shevchenko, as well as the names of streets and squares in honor of Ukrainian artists and historians.

During the Soviet period, there were many prohibited expressions describing the political aspects of life: they are now known in the West. These include samizdat (the publication of the book by the author himself), the "enemy of the people," "capitalist countries," and the "socialist bloc". In the early years of the Brezhnev era there was another term: "conscientious objectors", which applied to Soviet citizens who were denied emigration. Basically, these "conscientious objectors" were Soviet Jews, whom the communist regime did not want to transfer to Israel. Mass protests around the world and the adoption of the Jackson-Vanik amendment by the US Congress (at that time the Americans restricted trade with countries that impeded emigration) completely changed the situation.

The term "conscientious objectors" can be applied to 3,500 Ukrainian citizens who renounced Russian citizenship in 2014. They would have been much larger if people had been given more than two weeks to apply for a refusal of Russian citizenship. This was the point: citizens of Ukraine had to stand in long lines to apply for the right to renounce citizenship, which they did not want.

According to human rights organizations, the number of those wishing to give up Russian passports was at least five times more: but their applications either rejected or left insufficient time for consideration.

The whole point of the situation is that the compulsory extradition of Russian citizenship in the occupied territory is contrary to the obligations of Russia in the international arena and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The most eloquent examples of automatic attribution of citizenship are the issuance of Russian passports to the two most famous political prisoners of the Kremlin, Oleg Sentsov and Alexander Kolchenko. Despite their desire to remain Ukrainian citizens, Russia stated that it considers them its own. It is obvious that Sentsov and Kolchenko did not have the opportunity to file an application for the renunciation of Russian citizenship: they were behind bars. And the list of these two is not limited to.

I know a few cases when similar things happened to other Crimeans. Nikolai Seminozhenko, a 40-year-old resident of Simferopol, and his 18-year-old son Alexei (whose surname was changed because of fears for the safety of their relatives in the Crimea) went to work in the Czech Republic in 2013. I met Nicholas at the presentation of the book in 2016 in Prague, where he told me his story. In 2016, their apartment in Simferopol was granted by representatives of the new Russian police and military commissariat, who were looking for Alexei's son, who evaded compulsory military service in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Frightened relatives of Nicholas called him in the Czech Republic to warn about it. After clarifying the circumstances, Nikolai learned that in 2014 the occupying authorities automatically - without consent - granted them Russian citizenship on the basis of living in the Crimea. Since then, Nikolai and Alexei have not returned to the Crimea, fearing arrest.

In the euphoria of the annexation of the Crimea, Russian passports were issued to all in a row: the authorities did not pay attention to inconsistencies in documents. Many passports were issued to internally displaced persons from Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as to students with temporary registration from other regions of Ukraine. Today, Crimean authorities confiscate Russian passports from thousands of such migrants and force them to leave the peninsula. In 2014, for those wishing to get housing in the Crimea, quotas were established for 5,400 people: for foreigners, including Ukrainian citizens. Of these, 3,500 were "conscientious objectors": as in the Soviet times, they became "kitchen dissidents" and had to leave the peninsula. Since 2014, more than 250,000 people have come to the Crimea from the Russian Federation. But this is a completely different story.

Translation of HB.




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