Eskender Bariiev, Head of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, head of the department for legal and foreign affairs of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, told Apostrophe TV that many residents of the occupied Crimea were forced to receive Russian passports, since without them they could not even receive medical care.
“A difficult situation has developed with our citizens, who were forced to receive Russian passports. In fact, back in 2014, we traveled and urged people not to receive these passports, but, unfortunately, there was no such active, massive campaign from Ukraine. Thus, many people, having not received a Russian passport, could not even receive medical assistance when they called an ambulance”,- explained the Head of the CTRC.
Bariiev, answering the question whether it is easy to get rid of the passport, stressed that this is a very difficult question.
“You can't answer that easily, because people who are in Crimea or should reach the level that existed during the time of Mahatma Gandhi, when British passports were demonstratively burned. But another question is when we talk about how much it is necessary to keep our citizens on the territory of the occupied Crimea or the Donbas”,- he added.