'Does he know anything?' Crimean Tatar leader on Trump's peace plan

When Mustafa Dzhemilev read the news about Donald Trump's plan for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, he could not believe his eyes. Part of the US administration's peace plan, say recent reports, would involve Washington recognising annexed Crimea as legitimate Russian territory, among other concessions to the Kremlin.

- Shaun Walker

"The whole world knows what happened in Crimea... It would be such a damage to the reputation of the US that it will be hard for them to recover. It would be shameful," said Dzhemilev, a Soviet-era dissident turned Crimean Tatar political leader, in an interview at his office in Kyiv.

Back in March 2014, during the Russian annexation, Dzhemilev was asked for a public declaration of support for Moscow's takeover by Vladimir Putin himself. The Russian president spoke by telephone to Dzhemilev, promising money and support for the Crimean Tatar community in exchange for his backing. "He explained how we'll be so happy under Russian rule," Dzhemilev said, recalling the conversation with disdain.

Dzhemilev turned down the deal, saying that after centuries of oppressing the Crimean Tatars, the Russians were unlikely to change, and telling Putin the best thing he could do was remove his troops from the peninsula. A month later, when returning to Crimea from Kyiv, he was stopped at the new Russian frontier and told he was banned from entering. He has lived in exile in Kyiv ever since.

Unlike government officials, required to moderate their opinions of the Trump administration for the sake of diplomatic nicety, Dzhemilev, 81, pulls no punches. He talks quietly yet with a sharp turn of phrase and dark sense of humour, pausing every few minutes to light a fresh cigarette or answer his mobile phone.

"We are in a situation where the head of the US administration, the president, is now a person who feels no emotions, in whose head there is only deal-making... To say the things he says, to say Ukraine shouldn't have started this war. Have they been keeping this man in the dark for the last years? Does he know anything? Has he read anything?" Dzhemilev asked.