Resentment.

It’s no weaker than pain and hatred. And almost of the same intensity.

Resentment has become one of the main feelings in the Crimean Tatar community today. And this did not happen yesterday, and not even at the beginning of the full-scale war.

Back in 2014, the Crimean Tatars found themselves in the position of a divided nation. Now, this disunity is multiplied by the number of collision lines and actual borders.

Even at the beginning of the occupation of the peninsula, the Russians blew up the narrative that "the leaders of the Crimean Tatars fled to the mainland and betrayed the people who decided to remain under Russian jurisdiction."

This manipulation made an impression on some of those who remained. After all, the occupation propaganda did not specify that the representative body of the people, the Mejlis, was announced by the Russian authorities as an extremist organization, and each of the more than 2,000 Crimean Tatars elected to the Mejlis at various levels, was threatened with prison.

The slogan "Qırımda Yasha" (live in Crimea) was officially adopted at the World Congress of Crimean Tatars in Ankara in 2015, a year after the occupation. No matter what repressive invasion takes over the peninsula, for the Crimean Tatars to voluntarily leave Crimea is actually to implement the plans of the invaders personally - from Catherine the Second to Stalin - regarding the "resolution of the Crimean Tatar issue."

The Russians expected that the indigenous people would leave Crimea en masse. When this did not happen, they resorted to hybrid deportation. Young Crimeans began to disappear, some were found dead, and there was no systematicity in those kidnappings and murders, which created an atmosphere of fear.

Then the persecution of picket participants of Mejlis, and Hizb-ut Tahrir followed - these horizontal structures that have always been a threat to Moscow.

In the 8 years between the annexation of Crimea and the Great War, the Russian occupiers imprisoned almost two hundred inhabitants of the peninsula for political reasons.

More than 80% of the prisoners are Crimean Tatars, who make up only 15% of the population of Crimea. Moscow has clearly indicated who its main enemy is in Crimea. 20,000 Crimean Tatars left the peninsula in eight years, i.e. one in ten.

And the absolute majority of these people settled either in the south of the country - Henichesk, Melitopol, in the villages of the Arabat arrow, - or in the Kyiv region, mainly in Bucha and Irpen. When the "Russian peace" finally showed the world its beastly face, a new wave of escapes began.

Now internal migrants to the mainland are divided into those who stayed in Ukraine and those who decided to go abroad.

Putin's autumn mobilization also led to a mass flight of Crimeans from the peninsula, which had not occurred during more than eight years of occupation. Only in the first three days of mobilization, from 15 to 20 thousand Crimean Tatars left the peninsula. Some of them returned, but the mechanism of "self-deportation" started. Wives, children, and parents followed the men into forced exile.

And now the images have become multi-dimensional.

We can observe this situation on the scale of the whole of Ukraine. During the 11 months of the Great War, 8 million citizens left the country, and almost as many became internally displaced persons.

People leave their native cities and villages not only because they were occupied, and not only because of the constant fear of dying from an enemy rocket or artillery shell, but also because of chronic fatigue, which is caused by having to run for shelter, the sounds of sirens, lack of light, water and heating or having to walk to the 15th floor. Most often, they leave Motherland, worrying about their children or elderly parents. However, a new wave of resentment is emerging - between those who decided to endure and survive in their native land, and those who left.

Even if the war unexpectedly ends tomorrow, the Crimean Tatars will have minus 50,000 compatriots on the peninsula - one in five has left. According to surveys, half of the 8 million Ukrainian refugees plan to return - that is, at least every tenth citizen will remain abroad.

Thousands of families will break up, tens of thousands of friendships will end, but hundreds of new diasporas of Crimeans and Ukrainians will appear in Europe and North America.

Resentments will make up for the losses that each of us feels, but they can deprive us of opportunities for years.

In the end, the Baltics, freed from Soviet occupation, were revived by emigrants. In each of the three countries, the presidents were people from the diaspora - Valdis Adamkus (Lithuania), Vaira Vike-Freiberga (Latvia), and Toomas Ilves (Estonia). They were not burdened by the Soviet past and quickly moved their countries to Europe, which did not happen in Ukraine, on which the diaspora did not have such an influence.

Crimea and Ukraine can benefit from the new diasporas, using the knowledge and experience of those compatriots who are currently receiving education, work experience, and life in the West. And in the end, it is because of the pursuit of Western values that Russia is destroying, desperately wanting to return Ukraine to the colonial cemetery - even without a single Ukrainian and a single Crimean Tatar.