Permanent Representative Tamila Tasheva spoke at the All-Ukrainian Youth Forum “State-builder: Youth on the Guard of Change”, organized by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the All-Ukrainian Youth Center, the Ukrainian Student League and the Kyiv School of Public Administration.

The topic of Ms. Tasheva’s speech was: “De-occupied Crimea: how will young people create a new history of the peninsula?”

Tamila Tasheva emphasized that young people will play a key role in the reintegration of the de-occupied Crimea and other liberated territories of Ukraine, and told her personal story of her journey from activist to Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

“I worked in different environments, even did a little music production, but 2013-2014 changed everything for all of us. In those years, there were Maidans, which we saw in Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine, and they also took place in Crimea, it was the Revolution of Dignity. Of course, people were persecuted on the peninsula for this, just as they were in Donetsk and Luhansk. Every time you went out, you realized that you could be beaten or even detained. But people did it anyway – they went out to protest. It was very important for me to talk about them. Then the occupation of Crimea began, and that’s when I decided to return to the actions I had taken back in 2008 and to engage in even more civic and human rights activities,” Ms. Tasheva said.

Ms. Tasheva also spoke more about the resistance on the peninsula and how it only intensified after the full-scale invasion began. She mentioned the political prisoner Bohdan Ziza, who was illegally imprisoned for 15 years for pouring blue and yellow paint on the building of the occupation administration of Yevpatoria. She also mentioned a 14-year-old boy who traveled to Yalta from Kerch on his own and poured red paint on a banner with Putin’s portrait.

The Permanent Representative shared her experience in reintegration of Crimea, in particular, in cognitive de-occupation of the peninsula and emphasized that young people will be involved in all these processes. Ms. Tasheva spoke about the educational programs for future civil servants in the de-occupied territories that the Mission has developed jointly with the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and urged young people to register and join them starting in September.

“My key message in my speech is: don’t be afraid to give your time to Crimea and other de-occupied territories. These are our lands, our people, our history.”

Crimea is Ukraine!