ALINA SMUTKO and ANDRIY PERUN, of Reuters, report…
Lviv, Ukraine
Reuters
Lierane has fled Russian invaders twice in the last decade but remains hopeful that she will one day return to her native Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula seized by Moscow in 2014.
“Maybe it will happen in 50 years, as happened with my grandmother when she returned to Crimea. It will happen, that’s for sure,” Lierane, 43, told Reuters. She asked not to be identified by her surname as she still has relatives in Crimea.
Lierane, 43, Crimean Tatar and IDP from Simferopol, teaches a local vocal band to sing Crimean Tatar lullabies while they have dinner in the Crimean Yard restaurant which is a place with the traditional Crimean Tatar cuisine, which she reopened after fleeing from the town of Irpin, in Kyiv region, due to the full-scale Russian invasion, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Lviv, Ukraine, on 8th March, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Alina Smutko
Lierane and her son Tymur – then aged five – fled Crimea in 2016 and settled near Kyiv. Then, after Russian forces almost captured the capital in the early days of their invasion in 2022, they moved to the comparative safety of Lviv in western Ukraine, where she now runs a restaurant.
“Any empire can collapse, die, transform, disappear from a political map…The desire to go home remains, especially among the Crimean Tatars.”
– Lierane
Like many Crimean Tatars, a Turkic ethnic minority indigenous to the Black Sea peninsula, Lierane’s family history is a tragic tale of displacement, separation and upheaval that goes back to the Soviet era.
Lierane was born in Soviet Uzbekistan in 1980 to a family which, like more than 200,000 other Crimean Tatars, was deported en masse to Siberia and Central Asia in 1944 under dictator Josef Stalin.
As Moscow relaxed its authoritarian grip in the 1980s, many generations of Crimean Tatars returned to Crimea. Lierane still remembers flying back in 1988 at the age of eight.
After the annexation, Lierane said she initially became an “unwilling activist” supporting her community, motivated by the disappearance of a friend, Reshat Ametov, whose lifeless body she said was found badly tortured on 17th March, 2014.
Fearing increased house searches and arrests by Russian authorities, Lierane said she finally fled Crimea on the advice of a neighbour who had joined Russia’s security services.
Lierane, 43, a Crimean Tatar and IDP from Simferopol, irons napkins for the Crimean Yard restaurant which is a place with traditional Crimean Tatar cuisine, which she reopened after fleeing from the town of Irpin, in Kyiv region, due to the full-scale Russian invasion, while her son Tymur, 12, has breakfast before going to school, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Lviv, Ukraine, on 12th March, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Alina Smutko
International rights groups say Russian authorities in Crimea have persecuted Crimean Tatars to silence dissent, while Ukraine has accused Moscow of trying to erase their culture. Russia has denied systematic human rights abuses or persecution.
Community leaders in Ukraine estimate that 300,000 Crimean Tatars lived on the peninsula before the occupation and that 50,000 have left since 2014.
Lierane believes Russia’s grip on Crimea will not last forever.
“Any empire can collapse, die, transform, disappear from a political map…The desire to go home remains, especially among the Crimean Tatars,” she said.
