Young Crimean sentenced to 16 years for circulating video on resistance to Russian occupation
A Russian court has sentenced Eldar Abduraimov to sixteen years’ maximum-security imprisonment because of a video the 26-year-old Crimean Tatar posted in 2022 about the ATESH resistance movement in occupied Crimea. It was claimed that the young man had encouraged people to join ATESH and to carry out ‘acts of terrorism’ in Crimea, with this treated as ‘fostering terrorism’. This is not the first time that Russia has meted out savage sentences on ‘terrorism charges’ against Crimeans who oppose its occupation. In reporting the new sentence, Ukraine’s Presidential Mission on Crimea stated that Russia is afraid of mounting resistance in occupied Crimea and of losing control of the peninsula.
Eldar Abduraimov is from the village of Kalynivka, and would have still been at school in 2014, when Russia invaded and occupied Crimea. He was 24 in 2022, when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and when, in September 2022, ATESH [Crimean Tatar for ‘Flame’] emerged as a partisan resistance movement to Russia’s occupation of Crimea and military aggression against Ukraine.
The sentence was initially reported by the Southern District Military Court in Rostov on 27 November which stated that he had been charged with three supposed ‘crimes’ under Article 205.1 § 1.1 of Russia’s criminal code (‘fostering terrorist activities’}.
According to this, Abduraimov had, on 29 September 2022, seen “a video clip containing calls to join an anti-Russian underground movement in order to carry out acts of terrorism”. He had sent this video clip on to his contacts whom he had purportedly then tried to persuade to carry out an act of terrorism in Crimea. In fact, the call may have been merely to acts of arson against occupation administrative buildings in Crimea. It has been evident since 2014 that such actions, typically involving a Molotov cocktail or two, are treated as ‘acts of terrorism’ when carried out by those who oppose Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, while otherwise falling under charges of vandalism. In May 2022, the act of protest by artist Bohdan Ziza, in which he used two Molotov cocktails and also hurled paint in the colours of the Ukrainian flag at the occupation administration in Yevpatoria, was treated as ‘terrorism’, with Ziza sentenced to 15 years (details here)
There had, apparently, been an earlier sentence from the occupation ‘Bakhchysarai municipal court’, with that included in the sentence from the Southern District Military Court of 16 years maximum-security imprisonment with the first two years in a prison, the harshest of Russian penal institutions, as well as a fine of 100 thousand roubles. The sentence can still be appealed, however there is worryingly little information about the young Crimean Tatar, aside from that provided by Russian sources, and he, unfortunately, may not have an independent lawyer.
It is clear from the aggressive measures of repression and terror used by the occupation regime and the so-called ‘Crimean SMERSH’ vigilantes, that opposition to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and occupation of Ukrainian territory has not been crushed in Crimea.
Among the resistance movements and targets of Russian repression, is ATESH, which describes itself as a military partisan movement of Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians. ATESH warns on its Telegram channel that the Russian FSB are trying to hunt out its supporters by creating fake Telegram channels, with the aim also to accuse ATESH of “terrible things”. Russia typically labels those defending Ukraine, including members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Azov Regiment and Aidar Battalion, as ‘terrorists’, and ATESH is no exception.
ATESH members collect information on Russian military movements, with such information having helped some of the Ukrainian strikes on Russian military sites in Crimea or in the sea around it. The movement stresses that their targets are solely the Russian military and collaborators who have betrayed Ukraine and are helping the invaders and call on all supporters to show maximum care in the face of immense danger.