Ukraine embassy commemorates 70 years since Crimean Tatars deportation

Ukraine's embassy on Thursday commemorated 70 years since the deportation of Crimean Tatars and 153 years since national poet Taras Shevchenko was re-buried in the Ukrainian land.

Ukrainian ambassador in Bucharest Teofil Bauer told a news conference that Ukraine, since having declared independence, has assumed full responsibility for the fate of all its citizens, including those who have returned from the deportation places back to its territory.

'Ukraine backed the broadest national and cultural autonomy of the Tatars from Crimea, their historical homeland. (...) As regards the March 2014 occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea by Russia, a significant part of the Ukrainian citizens of a Tatar nationality in Crimea together with their families have left the peninsula, moving to various regions of our country. Ukraine this time around too lends the immigrants a helping hand, offering support and maximum assistance to their accommodation in the new locations, where they encounter favourable treatment from the local authorities and the Ukrainian citizens', Bauer underscored.

Undersecretary of State with the Department for Inter-ethnic Relations, ethnic Tatar Amet Adelin said that the 20th century for this people was 'a century of historical lack of fulfilment, a century of suffering, a century of pain'.

He said the day of May 18, 1944, when the deportation of Crimean Tatars began was 'the bleakest page in the Tatars' history'.

'On the night of May 18, 1944, in accordance with the Resolution of the Soviet Union's State Committee for Defence from May 11, 1944, the Tatars had begun being deported from Crimea, being accused of ?treason against the country'. According to the most plausible estimates of the...