Five years ago, on April 19, 2017, the International Court of Justice delivered its Order in the case “Ukraine v. Russia” ordering Russia to “refrain from maintaining or imposing limitations on the ability of the Crimean Tatar community to conserve its representative institutions, including the Mejlis” and to “ensure the availability of education in the Ukrainian language”.

The 2016 ban on the Crimean Tatars' highest representative and executive body became further evidence of Russia's gross violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, racial discrimination, and part of a large-scale campaign of intimidation and persecution of those who oppose the temporary occupation of the peninsula.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine condemns Russia’s deliberate disregard for the International Court of Justice Order as well as its continued crack-down on the rights of ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in the temporarily occupied Crimea.

"Repressive campaigns against the Crimean Tatars, their ousting, deprivation of the right to own land, forced change of the demographic composition of Crimea by the Russian occupation administration are aimed at destroying the identity of the Crimean Tatar people," - said First Deputy Minister Emine Dzhaparova.

We consider as illegal all decisions of the so-called "courts" to ban the entry to the territory of the Crimean Peninsula for a long time to the leader of the Crimean Tatar people Mustafa Dzhemilev, Head of the Mejlis Refat Chubarov, and deputy heads of this representative body - Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov.

We stress that the arrest of First Deputy Head of the Mejlis Nariman Dzhelal in September 2021 just days after his participation in the Crimea Platform Summit became another example of Russia's continued and deliberate pressure on Mejlis representatives. Today, along with more than 120 other Ukrainians, he is a political prisoner of the Kremlin.

Russia's impunity for its crimes has led to a deliberate increase in aggression, to a full-scale war against our state as well as to its atrocities in Ukraine with the aim to annihilate the Ukrainian people, eradicate culture, identity, and ultimately the Ukrainian state. Painful images of mutilated bodies and raped civilians, destroyed cities, towns, settlements of Kyiv region - Borodyanka, Bucha, Gostomel, Irpin - are evidences of Russia’s war crimes as well as of its agony to brutally destroy everyone and everything Ukrainian.

After February 24, 2022, Russia openly uses the occupied Crimea and the Black Sea as one of the bridgehead of its invasion of Ukraine, in order to move its manpower and weapons, launch aircrafts, cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as to hold Ukrainian prisoners of war. Conscription and mobilization of Crimean residents to the Russian Armed Forces is also underway.

We are grateful to our partners for all the support provided to our state in countering Russia's armed aggression. We call on the international community to continue its pressure on Russia to end its war against Ukraine, to stop persecutions of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in Crimea, as well as to implement the Order of ICJ.