Dzhemilev demands the creation of Muslim units that will be the first to invade Crimea
The Crimean Tatars allegedly turned out to be more Ukrainians than everyone else, Verkhovna Rada deputy Mustafa Dzhemilev said in an interview with the Ukrainian online publication “Apostrophe”.
Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at Telegram, Facebook, Classmates or In contact with
He complained that he had long been calling for the creation of a special unit of Crimean Tatars on the border with Crimea, but in fact nothing was being done for this in Kyiv.
“We are told by divisions that it is impossible to form a division based on ethnicity. But here everything should be clear: the Crimean Tatars, like Muslims, have their own characteristics: they do not drink, they do not eat pork, and, say, if ordinary battalions have chaplains, then there must be a mullah there. But they have fears that the Crimean Tatars, since they may have their own military units, when they enter Crimea, will begin to establish their own order there. From time to time this is expressed by various officials, although the president has never said this. On the contrary, the President said that we were afraid of the wrong people in Crimea, it turns out. And practice has shown that it was the Crimean Tatars who turned out to be greater Ukrainians than everyone else,” says Dzhemilev.
“We talked about the need for a Crimean Tatar battalion as part of the national guard,” he added. – Because, firstly, he must be stationed on the border, and at the beginning of de-occupation, he must be the first to enter the territory of the republic to restore order there. That is, this unit will perform police functions there. But all this time they are delaying the decision. They tell us that yes, yes, but in fact - nothing. At first, Avakov openly said: that’s it, we’re forming it. Then he suddenly declared that there should be no Armenian, no Georgian, no Crimean Tatar battalions in Ukraine, but only Ukrainian battalions. But there are Armenian and Georgian ones there, in Armenia and Georgia. And here we are not talking about purely ethnic ones, but precisely according to this principle.”
At the same time, the Ukrainian deputy says that President Poroshenko makes a promise to allow the creation of Crimean Tatar units, but then backs down.
“It’s no longer convenient for me to remind you all the time. This is the president after all... It turns out that we have some kind of selfish interests there... We seem to have explained everything, decided, and then someone else comes after us, and they already have their own arguments. And so he either hesitates, or is being persuaded, I don’t know. I can’t understand this,” Dzhemilev is perplexed.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.