As it follows from the statements of the aggressor’s propaganda, the occupiers’ punishers have begun a new round of repressions in the so-called group of cases of the “Crimean Tatar battalion named after Noman Çelebicihan”.
Let us recall that according to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, as of April, since the beginning of the occupation of Crimea, at least 55 detentions have been recorded on charges of “participation in the battalion named after Noman Çelebicihan”, of which 19 were in occupied Crimea and 36 in the occupied part of the Kherson region since February 2022.
At the same time, until 2024, mainly Crimean Tatars and pro-Ukrainian activists who allegedly participated in the “civil blockade of Crimea” since 2015 fell under the roller of repression, and many of the persons repressed by the occupiers did not participate in these “blockade” activities.
Let us recall that until 2022, the public formation “Asker” operated in the Kherson region to assist Ukrainian border guards, and it was legalized within the framework of Ukrainian laws, and its participants, in the conditions of an interstate conflict, have the rights of combatants according to the Geneva Conventions, including the status of prisoners of war when captured by the enemy.
But the occupiers not only ignore the rights of prisoners of war in relation to the members of the “Asker” formation they captured, but also repressed, as “members of the battalion”, persons who did not participate in the activities of the formation. For example, they “sentenced” the Henichesk journalist Gennady Osmak “for participation in the battalion”, in fact – as a repression against the independent media, which worked before the occupation of the left-bank Kherson region.
Moreover, the “Crimean Tatar battalion” itself, declared by the occupiers to be a “terrorist” and “illegal armed formation”, in the form in which the invaders write about it in the “criminal cases”, never existed at all.
Now, on May 22, the occupiers announced a draconian “sentence” from the Rostov-located Southern District Military Court, for 20 years of imprisonment, for participation in the “Crimean Tatar battalion” for the Ukrainian prisoner of war Igor Varchuk, captured by the aggressor in November 2024 and allegedly previously served in the 48th Separate Assault Battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“The verdict” in this “case No. 1-381/2025”, which began on March 24, was announced by the local judge Andrei Minashkin, allegedly for “undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities” and for “participation in the activities of an organization that is recognized as terrorist in accordance with Russian legislation.”
At the same time, no later than February 2025, Varchuk was publicly included by the aggressor in the “list” of alleged “terrorists” and in open resources he is listed as a missing native of Chervonograd, who had no relation to Crimea or Crimean Tatar activists before his captivity.
And the 48th battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine itself, as follows from public documentation, has no legal connection with the phantom “Crimean Tatar battalion” described above, which allegedly operated until 2022 in the Kherson region, as well as with the legal public formation “Asker”.
The occupiers themselves do not connect Varchuk’s “guilt” with the events in the Kherson Region or with the Crimean Tatar national movement, “blaming” him as “terrorism” exclusively for his usual statutory duties as a military man.
This repression is not only an international crime, a gross violation of the III Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, but it also became a new stage in the incitement of hysteria by the aggressor’s special services and its propaganda against the Crimean Tatar people, using obvious fakes and manipulations.
