On the eve of May 18, Russian security forces visited the homes of all Crimean Tatar activists and handed them warnings about the inadmissibility of offenses. And on the day of the anniversary itself, FSB officers stood near every place where people went to remember the victims of the genocide and conducted “operational filming.” However, people in Crimea are already accustomed to the fact that the occupiers consider the very memory of Stalin's crime to be extremism. 

From the very beginning of the occupation of the peninsula, Russian security forces did not even hide the fact that May 18 was also an extraordinary date for them. Issuing warnings about the inadmissibility of offenses is their traditional May ritual. These actions themselves have no legal force and have no effect on anything, but year after year, on the eve of the anniversary of the deportation, prosecutors and police go to the homes of Crimean Tatars, tell them that they have received information about the preparation of provocations, and read out a text stating that Russian law prohibits unauthorized mass events.

“This time, I did not ask again about the reasons for this visit. I just said that I found it extremely unpleasant. They handed it to me and left,” Crimean Solidarity quotes public defender Seit-Osman Karaliyev from Sudak, who has been receiving such ‘warnings’ for several years in a row.

Three plainclothes men also came to Crimean Solidarity activist Server Cholakchik. “More than 80 years ago, my people were declared traitors and exiled, and you still won't leave us alone. How long can you do this? You keep warning us year after year,” the public defender is indignant.

Human rights defender Abdureshit Dzhepparov told Cemaat that an employee of the Belogorsk District Prosecutor's Office spoke to him in Russian, and he answered him in Crimean Tatar. “That's how we talked. We pretended to understand each other. And then it turned out that he had forgotten his pen. He had to go back to the prosecutor's office to get a pen.”

The warning to Dzhepparov states that the security forces “received information about the preparation of extremist actions aimed at destabilizing the socio-political situation in Crimea, in particular in the light of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine.”

However, as in many years in a row, Crimeans did not stay at home on the day of the anniversary. People came to memorial sites, recited duʼa (prayers), laid flowers and remembered loved ones, both those who returned and died in their homeland after half a century of exile and those who never saw it. 

The Yellow Ribbon channel of the resistance movement posted photos of people holding small pieces of paper with the words “Crimea is Ukraine. We remember 1944” and ”1944-2014-2022. Oblivion leads to a new crime”. According to the organizers, the action took place in Simferopol, Yalta, Yevpatoria, and Bakhchisarai.

“We must preserve the memory of the past, support all those who are fighting for the freedom of Crimea, and resist the occupation together,” the Yellow Ribbon activists said. 

But Crimean residents are convinced that Russian security forces do not care about the photos on social media. “They are still afraid of mass actions, although Crimean Tatars have long since stopped doing anything like that on May 18. I still remember how, when I was a kid, we were driving home at night, and columns of internal troops from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions were being driven towards us, towards Simferopol. At that time, our people were fighting for the right to live on their native land, and the post-Soviet authorities were very afraid that we might ask them harshly. The occupiers also feel this fear, and they do not allow us to gather in large numbers to feel our strength,” says the activist from Dzhankoy.

“Eleven years have done their job. Many people are trying not to get into trouble, to avoid incidents. Especially in such a difficult time, when people are being kidnapped and imprisoned. The people no longer have that passion. The last time we were allowed to gather was in the first year of the occupation, and there were five rows of riot police surrounding Lenin Square and our procession, and armored personnel carriers on all the adjacent streets. And helicopters in the sky. And now no one remembers that there used to be mourning marches that gathered thousands of people from all over Crimea,” recalls one of the veterans of the national movement.

This year, only a few dozen people gathered near the memorial stone in the station square. Before the full-scale invasion, several hundred people gathered there every day. “Since there were so few people, all these operatives along the perimeter of the square were especially striking. They were openly filming on their phones everyone who walked to the stone. This is the kind of mourning under close supervision,” a resident of the Crimean capital describes the situation.

Against the backdrop of all these massive actions of intimidation and total control, the statement of collaborator Vladimir Konstantinov, who heads the Moscow-controlled parliament on the peninsula, looks particularly cynical. “For decades, deported peoples have been trying to achieve rehabilitation, but Ukraine and its Western curators have only speculated on this topic, pushing Crimeans to interethnic conflict,” the ‘speaker’ wrote on his social media page. Therefore, this is also a special day for collaborators - a good occasion to demonstrate their loyalty to the occupiers in return.