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KYIV: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday criticized Russia’s remedy of the Muslim-minority Tatar neighborhood in Kremlin-controlled Crimea and vowed to recapture the peninsula from Russia throughout a primary official state iftar. Russia wrested management of the Black Sea territory from Ukraine in 2014 and pushed by a referendum on the annexation that was condemned as fraudulent and illegitimate by Ukraine and its Western allies.
“Russia’s try and enslave Ukraine … started precisely with the occupation of Crimea, precisely with repressions towards Crimean, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar freedom and of Crimean Muslims,” he informed Ukrainian Muslim leaders and ambassadors from Muslim international locations. The Tatar neighborhood, which accounted for 12-15 p.c of the 2 million Crimea residents, largely boycotted the 2014 vote. Moscow then banned the Mejlis — the standard meeting of the Tatar Muslim minority in Crimea — declaring it an extremist group and has jailed members of the neighborhood since, citing safety issues.
“There isn’t any different for Ukraine, or for the world, apart from the de-occupation of Crimea. We’ll return to Crimea,” Zelensky mentioned, earlier than handing out awards to a number of Muslim Ukrainian servicemen. Zelensky, talking at a mosque outdoors the middle of the capital, introduced that Ukraine was starting a brand new custom of internet hosting an official iftar, the meal breaking the every day quick in the course of the holy month of Ramadan. “Ukraine is grateful to the Muslims of our nation and to everybody within the Muslim neighborhood of the world who, like us, longs for peace and safety from evil,” he added.
A number of Muslim-majority international locations, together with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have positioned themselves as mediators within the battle in Ukraine, brokering agreements between Kyiv and Moscow on grain exports or prisoner exchanges. Russia has a big Muslim minority from southern areas, together with Chechnya and Dagestan, lots of whom are combating for Moscow in Ukraine. Prime Muslim clerics within the nation have put their variations apart and rallied behind the Kremlin, media have reported.
Quite a few Muslim names have already appeared on lists of Russian captives, and in line with evaluation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, about one third of casualties are troopers with non-Slavic, principally Muslim names. Notably, Chechen strongman and Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov has dispatched a unit of loyalists to Ukraine. Kadyrov’s forces have grow to be a logo of Russian tyranny in Ukraine — and for some, Muslim-Christian battle, in line with the Washington Publish. Far-right Azov Battalion fighters have filmed themselves smearing bullets in pork grease to antagonize Muslims combating for Russia. – Companies
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