Today, 18 March, the occupiers “celebrate the anniversary of Crimea’s reunification with Russia”. But nobody will congratulate them!

Ukraine and the entire civilised world has not recognised, does not recognise and will never recognise the attempted annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. Because in 2014 the Russian Federation committed a crime. It occupied Crimea, the homeland of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people and part of the territory of the sovereign State of Ukraine, thus violating Article 3 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as its obligations under the Budapest Memorandum.

The Crimean Tatar people and pro-Ukrainian activists opposed the occupation. To overcome the non-violent resistance, the occupation authorities have launched a campaign to persecute them and create an image of an “internal enemy”, using hate speech, violating fundamental human rights and collective rights, in particular of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people.

The Russian authorities are actively using all instruments of pressure: illegal detentions, arrests, searches, initiation of fabricated administrative and criminal cases, threats, beatings, torture, forced abductions, murders, refusal to re-register and illegal alienation of private property, destruction of property. All these offences are systemic in nature.

According to the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre, during the the occupation period of Crimea, there have been registered 318 political prisoners and those prosecuted in criminal cases, 216 of whom are the representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people.
There are 194 people in the FSB detention centres,  134 of whom are Crimean Tatars. All these activists have paid for their civil position.
Remember occupants, we do not stop our struggle. We did not give you our Crimea, our Donbass – we will never give you our Kherson and all of our Ukraine.
Putin, go home!
Crimea is Ukraine!
Glory to Ukraine!

Sergey Kokurin is the second victim of Russian occupiers in Crimea in 2014

March 18, 2024

Ten years ago, on 18 March 2014, Sergey Kokurin, an ensign of a Ukrainian military unit in Crimea, was killed by the Russian military. He became the second victim of the Russian occupiers on the peninsula.

Sergey was killed during the assault on the Simferopol photogrammetric centre. He was killed by two shots – in the head and in the heart area.

The Prosecutor’s office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea opened a criminal case under Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (“murder”).

It is known that the assault on the photogrammetric centre was carried out by a unit of Russian mercenaries under the command of Colonel Igor Strelkov (Girkin) of the Russian Federal Security Service.

According to the official conclusion on the cause of death, Kokurin was killed by two 5.45 mm machine gun bullets fired from bottom to top. That is, it was not a sniper – it was fired by one of Girkin’s special forces.

This fact refutes all the statements by Vladimir Putin and the Russian media that Crimea was seized allegedly “without any victims”.