Thread by @JPLindsley

1/ @MarioNawfal has interviewed Putin puppets Lukashenko & Orbán. @ericbolling has criticized Ukraine for years.

But NOW they're giving voice to a Crimean Ukrainian whom Putin has been trying to silence.

Is Russia's reckoning at hand?

And is Crimea the key?🧵

2/ Witness @ericbolling's transformation:

From wondering why Ukraine matters ...

... to explaining why EVEN FREE CRIMEA matters—

in this interview with Mustafa Dzhemilev, a leader of Ukraine's Crimean Tatars.

Watch a mind CHANGE: ⤵️

3/ Meet Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa-ağa, as he is respectfully called:

⦿ 15 years in Soviet gulags
⦿ 303-day hunger strike
⦿ Seeking Crimea, Putin tried to bully him

This is one of the first people Zelenskyy called when Russia invaded: an 78-year-old genocide survivor. ⤵️

4/ February 24, 2022: Zelenskyy turned to Mustafa-ağa.

As a dissident survivor of the Soviet gulag, he knew Russia's playbook:

Kill leaders → Force exodus → Import uncultured Russians → Erase culture → Control society to maintain and expand war machine. ⤵️

5/ Zelensky asked Mustafa-ağa, a Ukrainian MP, to go to Turkey.

The mainly Muslim indigenous Crimean Tatars are Turkic-speaking.

Many fled to Turkey after centuries of Russian persecution.

Mustafa-ağa's words were a cold shower for Turkish president Erdoğan.

📸 2017 ⤵️

6/ After that February 2022 meeting with Mustafa Dzhemilev, Erdoğan emphasized Turkey would never recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Turkey, across the Black Sea from Ukraine, knows what Ukrainians know:

Crimea is the key to a just and lasting peace. Here's why: ⤵️

7/ As everyone knew during the 1850s Crimean War, he who controls Crimea controls Black Sea trade between East & West—

—and Crimea gives Russia a warm-water naval base from which it can unleash hell upon others.

Russia's loss in the first Crimean war made the seas safer ⤵️

8/ Although today the Crimean War is poetically famous for a British setback, Russia's ultimate defeat made Russia go home.

It forced the Tsars to look inward, to solve their domestic strife, to free the serfs—rather than disguise internal decay with outward gains. ⤵️

9/ Of course, decades later, Bolshevik Russia returned—

—and as they did under Catherine "the Great," they again tried to delete the Crimean Tatar people.

... because the Crimeans refused to join the Russian War Machine, which is what happens when Moscow conquers people ⤵️

10/ In 1944 when Mustafa-Ağa was 6 months old, Stalin deported ALL Crimean Tatars to deep within Russia.

Like Ukrainians, they were TOO resistant to tyrants. Many died in the horrible process.

"We lost 46% of our people. That was real genocide," he tells @MarioNawfal ⤵️

11/ In 2016, Mustafa-Ağa's countrywoman @jamala
won @Eurovision for Ukraine with her song "1944" about the plight of the Crimean Tatars:

You think you are gods
But everyone dies
Don't swallow my soul
Our souls

This is the cry of Crimea, of Ukraine ⤵️

12/ As Mustafa-Ağa explains, it was only Ukrainian independence that gave Crimean Tatars hope:

"Ukraine took a course to restore our rights," Dzhemilev says.

✓ Autonomous Republic status
✓ Parliament (Mejlis)
✓ Schools in their language
✓ Cultural restoration ⤵️

13/ But in 2014, when Ukrainians including many Crimean Tatars protested against the brutal pro-Kremlin regime in Kyiv, Russia swept in to take Crimea.

"This process [of the restoration of the Crimean Tatars] has been interrupted," says Mustafa-Ağa, ex-chief of the Mejlis. ⤵️

14/ I've met Mustafa-Ağa (@MDzhemilev). Ukraine's leaders seek his counsel like a grandfather's wisdom.

When someone survives gulags, genocide, and Putin's threats, even skeptics begin to listen. ⤵️

15/ And maybe others are starting to see what Russia knows: To be a global threat, Moscow needs Crimea.

Ukrainians are willing to stand in the way saying NO for the good of all—

... as long as they can.

See @MarioNawfal's powerful Ukraine interviews in the next post— ⤵️

16/ Please note you might have to adjust your age settings to see this. We are not sure why!

🧵🎬