MAIN TOPICS:

• The aggressor country has classified the materials of the “criminal case” against political prisoner of the Crimean Tatar Lenia Umerova, who is being held in the Lefortovo detention center.
• The occupiers have criminally convicted three Ukrainian citizens from the temporarily occupied Crimea on charges of alleged “terrorist activity.” Alim Sufianov and Seiran Khayredinov were sentenced to 12 years in a strict regime colony, and Oleksandr Sizikov – 17 years: https://cutt.ly/awqiVUIG
• On May 17, Mykola Shiptur crossed the Russian-Georgian border. The first citizen of Ukraine illegally imprisoned by the occupiers in Crimea back in 2014 is finally free: https://cutt.ly/6wqiBo3v
• Alim Sufianov, Edem Bekirov and Edem Smailov celebrated their birthdays this week in illegal detention. Our campaign “Letters to a free Crimea” is running until May 27 – you can write letters to political prisoners, and we will pass them on: https://cutt.ly/e5IoS7o

Crimes of occupation

• As of May 22, it is known that the occupiers have illegally imprisoned 181 Ukrainian citizens, 117 of whom are representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people. Out of the total number, 32 political prisoners are arrested, 130 are imprisoned, 18 are without status, and 1 has been released but is still in a temporary detention center for foreign nationals in Russia.
• The occupiers looted the Chersonesos Tavriya Museum and Reserve and took Byzantine gold and other artifacts, including ancient bone, clay and other materials, to Veliky Novgorod, allegedly for an exhibition. In addition, the occupiers continue criminal archaeological excavations on the territory of Chersonese.
• The occupiers again detained Andriy Bilozerov, a teacher who was fired for supporting Ukraine, this time for a tattoo with a trident and a post on social media where he wrote that “in Crimea, racists are hated as much as in Kherson, and for this reason, racists are shelling it every day.”
• The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that in Feodosia, the occupation administration is trying to export stolen grain to Russian ports – for this purpose, Ukrainian agricultural products are being loaded onto the sanctioned Syrian ship SOURIA.
• Heads of the occupation administrations visited Crimea to receive instructions on the export of cultural property. According to the National Resistance Center, the Russians are plundering the Berdiansk Art Museum named after Isak Brodsky – they are instructed to take out the most valuable exhibits (paintings by famous artists Aivazovsky, Benois, etc.) first.

Militarization of the Crimean peninsula

• Residents of the occupied Crimea continue to record the activity of Russian fighter jets firing missiles towards the mainland of Ukraine on a daily basis. They also report missile launches from the Black Sea in the same directions.
• The occupation authorities have banned walks, recreation and fishing along the entire coast from Balaklava to the Tarkhankut Peninsula and further along the Karkinit Bay to the administrative border in connection with Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.
• According to open sources, Russian soldiers have already begun digging trenches in the center of Sevastopol, near a military unit. From a distance, it may seem that they are just tearing up pipes, but the “workers” are wearing boots and a warrant officer is standing over them.
• In the Dzhankoy district, a Mi-28 helicopter crashed, allegedly on a training flight. Both pilots were killed, there was no damage on the ground. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the preliminary cause was “equipment failure.”
• Russia’s main radio frequency center is purchasing equipment for the occupied Crimea – radio network analyzers worth 1.77 billion rubles, intended for branches in Crimea and Sevastopol, and a little bit for Rostov-on-Don.
• The occupation authorities said that solemn last-bell ceremonies will be held only for graduates of the 9th and 11th grades – “the decision was made for security reasons.” And all schools in Sevastopol will have increased security for the last bell and graduations.
• Eskender Bariev, the head of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, said that the occupiers in Crimea plan to “provide dry rations to the shelters to be set up in schools,” and that students’ parents are required to bring water and other things.
• In the Simferopol district, grain wagons derailed, which caused the occupiers to stop the movement of electric trains on the Simferopol-Sevastopol stretch for some time.
• According to open sources, a Russian Kalibr cruise missile fell in the occupied Crimea – near the village of Vulkanovka, Leninsky district, a shepherd found it in the forest on the morning of May 17.
• According to open sources, mobile Internet is jammed in Sevastopol at night so that “local residents do not spread information and do not help Ukrainian drones.”
• The occupiers have begun to organize military and tactical medicine training for schoolchildren at a training ground in the village of Perevalne: 50 children are to be taught how to fly a quadcopter, throw grenades (training), and assemble and disassemble AK-74m/PKM.
• Power outages are becoming more frequent in Simferopol – it happened twice in the past week, and the occupiers are justifying it with “technological violations” and “inspections”.
• The occupation Crimean railway introduced a tightened security regime on the railway, and therefore called on everyone to “refrain from taking photos and videos of transport infrastructure, engineering structures (bridges, tunnels), railways, communication, navigation and traffic control systems.”
• In Sevastopol, an explosion occurred at night at the Kacha airfield, which disabled a military Mi-8 helicopter from the 318th Regiment. The occupiers deny this information, but open sources indicate that after the explosion, the occupation forces conducted filtration measures in this and neighboring settlements.

Forced mobilization

• As of May 22, at least 378 soldiers of the Russian army have already been buried in the occupied Crimea. 264 of them were probably Ukrainian citizens. The number of burials may be higher, as many of them take place without coverage.
• The occupiers in the Kerch region conducted demonstration training with the participation of veterans of the war in Afghanistan. Those who refused were threatened with far-fetched fines and mobilization. In this way, the occupiers are trying to prepare informal “volunteer defense units” for the time of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. However, the locals refuse to join.
• We would like to remind you of our guide on how to avoid illegal service in the aggressor’s army: https://cutt.ly/vVIJLiQ.

Propaganda of the occupation administrations and incitement to hatred

• This week, the Taliban’s occupation dog became “famous” for harassing a 14-year-old boy who poured red paint on a portrait of Putin and an advertising poster of the occupation military enlistment office. According to open sources, the boy came to Yalta from Kerch for this purpose and even rented an apartment to prepare for the action.
• The occupiers in Bakhchisarai spent 600 thousand rubles on a monument to Russian soldiers who died in the Russian war against Ukraine.
• The occupation henchmen decided to unleash a political and legal misunderstanding – they initiated the alleged cancellation of the decision to transfer Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. The occupation propaganda dumps actively picked up this topic and are still spreading it.
• On the eve of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People, the occupation special services sent out so-called “warnings about the inadmissibility of violating the law” to the Crimean Tatars. Activists, former political prisoners, human rights defenders and ordinary representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people received such “warnings”.
• In Feodosia, the occupiers stopped a car rally dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Crimean Tatar Genocide and forced the participants to remove Crimean Tatar flags from their cars.
• Meanwhile, in Sevastopol, the occupiers organized celebrations on the occasion of the “240th anniversary of the Black Sea Fleet”: there were raising of the Russian state rags on ships, a prayer service, and sailors lining up on Nakhimov Square. The city center even hosted a parade of military brass bands from the Sevastopol garrison.

Public sentiment

• Natalia Gumenyuk, a spokesperson for the Southern Operational Command, said that Russians are considering options for leaving the occupied Crimea: they continue to pack, realize the alarm of their situation, study the traffic map, road map, possible exit options, and movement beyond the “curb.” She added that the occupation administrations are starting to pack documents proving their crimes, and the checkpoints are overloaded.
• In Simferopol, Yalta, Yevpatoria and Kerch, activists of the Yellow Ribbon movement painted patriotic graffiti, put up new posters and held secret requiem meetings in some cities to honor the victims of the genocide of the Crimean Tatar people.
• The Crimean Fighting Seagulls are also active: They claimed responsibility for the incident on the railroad, explosions in Sevastopol. In addition, they continue to distribute leaflets warning that the Russian military must immediately leave the peninsula and publish analytics on the situation in Crimea.
• In the Cho-Cho karaoke bar (Yevpatoria), the occupier’s wife wanted to sing the Russian anthem, but was refused, which caused a scandal. The video was actively shared online. After intimidation and harassment, she was allowed to sing the Russian anthem, but she did so in an almost empty bar, as the visitors demonstrated that they did not need her howls.
• Activists of the Atesh resistance movement continue to report information about the key fortifications of the occupiers in Crimea – they noted how the defense is organized in the village of Molochne near Yevpatoria, where the firing points are located and where the gap in the occupiers’ defense is.
• The first regional branch of Sberbank was opened in Sevastopol, and Crimeans decided to check its bot right away: Crimean partisans posted a screenshot in which the bot replied that Crimea was occupied, because the attempted annexation in the form of a pseudo-referendum was not recognized by the world.
• The Mission continues to receive requests from Ukrainian citizens who want to leave Crimea because they cannot tolerate the occupation and total propaganda. We remind you of our instructions on how to leave the temporarily occupied Crimea: https://cutt.ly/YV8zdBz

❗️ We thank the conscious Ukrainian citizens in the occupied Crimea for promptly reporting on the situation on the Crimean peninsula, in particular on the socio-economic situation, the movement of Russian troops, the movement of resistance to the occupation, etc. For more information, please send an e-mail to the Information Support Department of the Mission:

📧 [email protected]

🇺🇦 Glory to Ukraine!