In the weeks before he died, Mr Umerov’s father peered out of the window and saw the “little green men” - the Russian soldiers who took over Crimea by stealth and later oversaw the flawed referendum that found 97 per cent of voters in favour of the region leaving Ukraine for its neighbour. “My father and the other old people warned us to beware of a new deportation,” said Mr Umerov in an interview. “He thought it was the beginning of the Third World War.”