Mustafa Dzhemilev, famous human rights defender, former Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, Ukrainian MP and the presidential envoy for the affairs of Crimean Tatar people, stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin expresses regret in his immediate entourage and wishes he hadn’t ordered to occupy Crimea. The Pryamyi TV channel reports that.

“Now there’s simply no way out for Putin. What you think, can Putin leave Crimea without losing his public face? There’s no such way. Can Putin admit he made a mistake? By the way, in his immediate entourage, he is already speaking about that. We do have this accurate information. These are the trusted sources. He says – we made a mistake with the Crimea, though we won’t admit it,” Dzhemilev says.

He added that leaving Crimea is “political hara-kiri” for Putin as he chose the role of “the gatherer of the Russian lands”, thus he can’t admit he made a mistake.

“There’s a Chechen song: everyone makes mistakes, but only a true man can say ”I was wrong”. However, there are no such men left in Kremlin. I am sure,” Dzhemilev said.

Mustafa Abduldzhemil Dzhemilev is former Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament since 1998. He is the recognized leader of the Crimean Tatar National Movement and a former Soviet dissident.

Dzhemilev was born on 13 November 1943 in Ay-Serez, Crimea, at the time under Nazi German occupation. He was only six months old when his family, with the rest of the Crimean Tatar population, was deported by Soviet authorities in May 1944, soon after Soviet forces retook the peninsula. He grew up in exile, in the Uzbek SSR. In May 1989, he was elected to head the newly founded Crimean Tatar National Movement. The same year he returned to Crimea with his family, a move that would be followed by the eventual return of 250,000 Tatars to their homeland.

The Soviet regime considered Dzhemilev a dangerous enemy. Between 1966 and 1986, Dzhemilev was arrested six times for anti-Soviet activities and served time in Soviet prisons and labor camps and lived under surveillance. Dzhemilev is also remembered for going on the longest hunger strike in the history of human rights movements. The hunger strike lasted for 303 days, but the activist survived due to forced feeding.

In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Dzhemilev who had previously served as the MP was re-elected into parliament after being in the top 10 of the electoral list of Petro Poroshenko's Bloc. The famous human rights defender, the former chairman of Mejlis of Crimean Tatars and currently the MP of Ukrainian Parliament, Dzhemilev is well known for fierce support of his people in the Russian-occupied Crimea. He and other leaders of the Crimean Tatar people strongly condemned the illegitimate 'referendum' in the Russian-annexed Crimea in March 2014, demanding that Russia leave the peninsula.

Back in 2016, Dzhemilev was nominated for Sakharov Prize.

‘Mustafa Dzhemilev, the former leader of Mejlis of Crimean Tatar people, ex-Soviet dissident, and Ukrainian MP has been struggling for human rights and rights of national minorities for over 50 years now. As he was only six months old, he and his family were deported to Central Asia, along with other Crimean Tatars. 45 years after that, he returned. Now that Russia annexed Crimea, the human rights defender is once again banned to enter the peninsula’, reads the note at the European Parliament’s Website.