In Kiev, I see signs of a nation being forged in bitter conflict. But it’ll require a heroic effort to succeed‘Welcome to the nation state of Ukraine,” says Mustapha Dzhemilev, a diminutive, soft-spoken 71-year-old leader of the Crimean Tatars, gentle on the outside, hard as steel within. He was deported from Crimea on Stalin’s orders in 1944, when he was just six months old, along with so many fellow Tatars. Persecuted under Soviet rule, he went on hunger strike for 303 days. A year ago, after Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, this quiet fighter was banned from re-entering the peninsula …read more
Source: The Guardian
