“The fight continues”: a decade of Russian rule has not silenced Ukrainian voices in Crimea, say columnists for the British newspaper The Guardian .
“Ten years of the Crimean Spring,” read billboards throughout the Crimean peninsula. “It all started with us.” At the time, although almost no other country recognized the annexation as legal, most people then believed that Russian rule would likely remain in Crimea for decades.
However, with the start of a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine, the situation is becoming more and more unpredictable. The suspension of Ukraine’s counteroffensive makes it unlikely that Kyiv will be able to retake Crimea militarily any time soon, and a brief period of optimism in late 2022, when senior officials called Crimea’s return “inevitable”, has long since evaporated. But two years of war have demonstrated the vulnerability of Russian dominance on the peninsula for the first time since 2014.
Amid the precarious security situation, Russia’s crackdown on dissent in Crimea, which has been ruthless since 2014, has risen to a new level. In addition to the ongoing persecution of activists of the Crimean Tatar minority, traditionally largely pro-Ukrainian, Russian police and the FSB detain local residents who publish Ukrainian songs on their social media profiles or publicly express pro-Ukrainian views.
Since the beginning of a full-scale war, Crimea has ranked second among Russian regions after Moscow in the number of lawsuits brought against citizens for “discrediting the Russian army.” Yaroslav Bozhko, the Kiev representative of the Yellow Ribbon, a nonviolent underground movement in the occupied territories of Ukraine, said that operating in Crimea now is extremely dangerous, but even small actions such as painting pro-Ukrainian graffiti or publicly tying yellow ribbons have helped lift the spirits of other pro-Ukrainian citizens
[Crimean wind]
