Abstract This article provides an overview of the implementation of the rights of European national, ethnic or linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples in 2022, in the fields of administration of justice, public administration and public services. Relevant legal developments are presented in the activities of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the European Union, and the Council of Europe. These legal developments include not only resolutions and decisions of the relevant monitoring bodies, but also jurisprudence when applicable. Special attention is paid to the application of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which are the most important international treaties on the rights of minorities in Europe.
Abstract This article analyses the Crimean Tatars’ politics of the memory of deportation in post-Soviet Crimea, and focuses on the changes in these politics since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. This article is organized as follows. First, I outline the main memory-related practices associated with deportation, following the mass repatriation of Crimean Tatars in the early 1990s. Second, I describe the changes that have occurred in the politics of the memory of deportation since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Third, I use interviews and social media analysis to show how these changes were perceived by the Crimean Tatars. Finally, based on expert interviews, I discuss how these changes affected interethnic relations in Crimea. I argue that Russia’s policy regarding the Crimean Tatars’ memory of the deportation in annexed Crimea is intended to depoliticize and regulate it according to official narratives about the Soviet past, and has the potential to exacerbate interethnic relations.
Abstract In this article I show how the Russian Federation (Russia) seeks to sustain an impression of business as usual in its minorities policy and administration, while normalising as far as possible the results of its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. I start with the controversial All-Russian Census, 2020–2021, conducted from October to December 2021, and the disputes concerning its results. Second, I turn to the Fifth Report submitted by Russia to the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) on 13 April 2021. Third, I pay close attention to the activities of the Federal Agency for Affairs of Nationalities (ethnic minorities), FADN, and its Director Igor Barinov, which have continued their programme of work. Fourth, Putin’s war on Ukraine has impacted directly on Russia’s ethnic minorities, which have supplied the great majority of young soldiers.
Abstract This article focuses on consequences of Russian aggression and war-induced displacement on minority groups that are often overlooked by both Ukrainian minority studies within Ukraine as well as by international migration research: the Ahiska (Meskhetian) Turks, Crimean Tatars, and Roma. Due to their location in the south and east of the country, all three were strongly affected by Russian aggression in 2014, and especially after the full-scale invasion which began on 24 February 2022. Most research on displaced Ukrainian nationals focuses on the West-East (European Union (EU)-Russia) nexus and ignores the South. This article compares the experience of displacement of the three groups, in relation to 1) migration to Türkiye (for Ahiska Turks and Crimean Tatars) and 2) resettlement to other countries and internal displacement (for the Roma). It focuses on the (trans)national experience of displacement for minorities, as well as how this displacement and the response of receiving countries affects their sense of belonging. The study is based on a mixed-method approach combining desk research and qualitative in-depth interviews conducted with representatives of each community between 2014 and 2023, both in Ukraine and in their destination countries.
