#Simferopol

[postcard-from-the-past]

Allee in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine

Russian vintage postcard

[greencheekconure27]

Jamala - ARAFAT DAĞINDAN (Official Music Video)

ARAFAT DAĞINDAN – це містична старовинна народна пісня з міста Акмесджит (Сімферополь), одна з небагатьох на релігійну тематику: філософська, глибока і драматична. Ви маєте це побачити та почути.

Lyrics+Translation

QT:

ARAFAT DAĞINDAN, DAĞINDAN,

ENERLER HACILAR,

ENERLER HACILAR.

YÜREGİMDE BİTMEZ DE ACILAR,

ĞAMLAR DA, ACILAR,

ĞAMLAR DA, ACILAR.

VARAYIM, GİDEYİM, GİDEYİM,

DAĞLARNIÑ BAŞINA,

DAĞLARNIÑ BAŞINA.

İSMİÑNİ YAZDIRAYIM, YAZDIRAYIM,

QABRİMNİÑ TAŞINA,

QABRİMNİÑ TAŞINA.

Translation of the song:

UKR:

СХОДИТЬ З ГОРИ АРАФАТ

ПРОЧАН БІЛИЙ ПОТІК.

А НА СЕРЦІ МОЇМ

ПЕЧАЛЬ ЧОРНА ЛЕЖИТЬ.

ПІДУ, ЗІЙДУ І Я НА ВЕРШИНУ ГІР —

НАНЕСУ ТВОЄ МʼЯ

НА МОГИЛЬНИЙ КАМІНЬ СВІЙ.

***

ENG:

ARAFAT DESCENDS FROM THE MOUNTAIN

A WHITE STREAM OF PILGRIMS.

AND IN MY HEART

I FEEL A BLACK SORROW.

I WILL GO AND CLIMB TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN

AND I WILL PUT YOUR NAME

ON MY GRAVESTONE.

[freecrimea]

A young man from Simferopol, Nikita Valeev, was arrested for in supporting Ukraine on social media. He posted Ukrainian songs ("Nazi" according to Crimean Smersh) and "prohibited" symbols (meaning Ukrainian). He was taken away and forced to apologize, then fined and put under 7 days of arrest.

[olivia2010kroth]

Olivia Kroth: Lektionen in russischer Geschichte – Zum Gedächtnis an die heroische sowjetische Panzerfahrerin Maria Oktjabrskaja, 80 Jahre nach ihrem Tod

Lektionen in russischer Geschichte: Zum Gedächtnis an die heroische sowjetische Panzerfahrerin Maria Oktjabrskaja, 80 Jahre nach ihrem Tod von Olivia Kroth Als die Nazi-Wehrmacht 1941 in die Sowjetunion einmarschierte, griffen junge Menschen aus allen Sowjetrepubliken zu den Waffen, bildeten sich zu Kämpfern aus und nahmen am Großen Vaterländischen Krieg teil, um den Feind zu besiegen und das…

[unto-faith-unashamed]

The most important thing in life is to always do good. If you can't do great deeds for people, at least try to do something small.

-St. Luke of Simferopol

[dramoor]

“Make your heart a monastery. There sound the semandron, there call your vigil, cense and whisper ceaseless prayers. God is next to you…”

~St. Luke the Surgeon of Simferopol

[blueiscoool]

Moscow Auction House Sells a $1 Million Painting Stolen from a Ukrainian Museum

In Russia, Ukrainian artist Ivan Aivazovsky’s painting “Moonlit Night” has been put up for auction, according to Ukraine’s former Deputy Attorney General and Prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Gyunduz Mamedov, who has reported the auction plans.

Russia’s looting and destruction of Ukrainian museums and cultural heritage sites have resulted in significant losses, with nearly 40 museums plundered and almost 700 heritage sites damaged or destroyed since the invasion began in February 2022, causing cultural losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros.

The first report that “Moonlit Night” will be the main lot of the auction, which will take place at the Moscow Auction House on 18 February, appeared on the Telegram channel by Russia’s state-funded news agency RIA Novosti, noting that the painting was estimated at 100 million rubles (approximately $1.09 million) before the sale.

‘In 2017, [Interpol], at the request of [Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Crimea], put the paintings on the international wanted list. Thus, Russia openly disregards [international law], as according to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, the export of cultural properties and transfer of ownership is prohibited,” Mamedov emphasized on X.

In 2014, during the early stages of Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Aivazovsky’s painting “Moonlit Night” was illegally transferred to the Simferopol Art Museum, along with 52 other artworks.

In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some of his works were destroyed in an airstrike on the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, and others were looted by Russian forces from Mariupol and Kherson museums, including “The Storm Subsides,” which was moved to the Central Taurida Museum in Simferopol, Crimea.

[she-is-ovarit]

Ukrainian saboteurs who are alleged to have poisoned and killed 46 Russian soldiers are on the run in annexed Crimea after a shoot-out with police, a local report says. Two young saboteurs who had poisoned members of the Russian military in Simferopol and Bakhchisarai fled when authorities attempted to detain them in Crimea, Telegram channel Kremlin Snuffbox said on Tuesday. The police went to apprehend the female suspects at a private house in Yalta but were surprised to find them "well armed" and "well prepared," the post said.

The saboteurs opened fire and fled the scene in a car, and authorities do not know their current whereabouts. Three officers were killed and two were wounded in the shoot-out, a source in Russia's Federal Security Service told the Telegram channel. It was reported in December that members of a Ukrainian partisan group called Crimean Combat Seagulls poisoned and killed 24 Russian soldiers after lacing their vodka with arsenic and strychnine. At the time, Snuffbox quoted unnamed sources as saying that "two nice girls" tricked the unit in Simferopol, Crimea, into drinking the vodka, per the Kyiv Post translation. In another incident, saboteurs killed 18 and hospitalized 14 Russian personnel in Bakhchisarai, Crimea, by putting arsenic and rat poison in pies and beer, Kremlin Snuffbox previously reported. Russian military personnel stationed in Crimea have been asked not to take any food or any drinks from strangers and to detain any suspicious young women who approach them to prevent further incidents of poisoning. Business Insider could not independently verify the report. There were also been reports of two mass poisonings of Russian troops in Mariupol in 2023. Acts of sabotage by Ukrainian resistance and partisan groups are used to harass Russian soldiers in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula occupied by Russia since 2014, and other occupied territories, and supply intelligence for Ukrainian strikes on military installations.

[redjaybathood]

This is very important. In Crimea, russians, again, start to use fake criminal investigations to incarcerate Crimean Tatars. This is not new - but it is the new mass wave of searches on trumped-up charges and arrests.

Translation of the thread below.

1/9 Mass searches in Crimea

10 Crimean Tatar families. 10 homes, where russian "security forces" broke into at dawn. What do we know about the newe wave of mass searches on the Crimean peninsula? 

2/9 4 activists of "Crimean Solidarity", Bakhchysarai, as well as 6 religion leaders and activists from Dzhankoy district, became victims of the rampage of the occupatoinal forces.

Among them, the former Imam Remzi Kurtnezirov, who has a severe disability.

 3/9 "Security forces" behaved themselves very rudely, despite the presence of elderly and small children.

Over the course of the searches, they took documents, tech, and literature. Moreover, the relatieves of the detained people state that the books were planted.

 4/9 FSB agents, when asked by the relatives, replied that they are looking for weapons and illicit chemicals. 

The men are charged with Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - the same one that the Hizb ut-Tahrir cases are fabricated under.

5/9 After the searches, Crimean Tatars were taken to FSB HQ in Simferopol. 

Currently, some of them were allowed a lawyer but the pre-trial detention measure was not choosen yet.

6/9 Names of the detained: Rustem Osmanov, Aziz Azizov, Memet Lumanov, Mustafa Abduramanov, Remzi Kurtnezirov, Vakhid Mustafayev, Ali Mamutov, Arsen Kashka, Enver Khalilayev, Nariman Ametov

7/9  

According to preliminary information, this is the third largest wave of searches on the alleged involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir. 

The most massive searches took place in March 2019, when 24 Crimean Tatars were targeted.

8/9 CrimeaSOS analyst Yevhen Yaroshenko notes that detentions in the "Hizb ut-Tahrir cases" in Crimea are intensified approximately once every six months.

This is due to the targeted plan for certain categories of "cases" that intelligence officers have to fulfill.

9/9 Repressions against Crimean Tatars are one of the principles of russia's criminal policy on the peninsula. 

In order to stop the occupiers, we must respond firmly to every manifestation of lawlessness and effectively oppose it

[henk-heijmans]

Viburnum, Simferopol, Ukraine, 2016 - by Elena Kutsenko, Russian

[ohsalome]

(story taken and machine-translated from the official twitter account of the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea)

Today's story is about a woman who was detained by the occupiers in the spring of 2022 and illegally sentenced to almost 7 years in prison. Iryna Danylovych is a nurse and citizen journalist.

She was threatened, blackmailed and forced to confess to things she did not do. Now Irina is in a Russian colony, her health is deteriorating due to the lack of quality and timely medical care.

Iryna Danylovych worked as a nurse at the Malachite rehabilitation center in Koktebel, maintained a social media page and several blog columns on the rights of healthcare workers and healthcare issues in the occupied Crimea.

The occupation forces abducted Iryna Danylovych in April 2022. She was returning from a night shift at the hospital when the occupiers searched her house and seized all her appliances, several books and documents.

There was no contact with Irina for more than a week. She was illegally detained by the FSB: she was subjected to psychological pressure, beaten, threatened with death, interrogated on a polygraph, threatened to be "taken to the forest" (ed. - meaning killed and buried in the forest) or "to Mariupol" (once again, killed), fed once a day, and not allowed to go to the restroom.

Eventually, the occupiers informed her relatives that a decision had been made to place her under "administrative arrest", allegedly because "she had transferred unclassified materials to another country". Later, they fabricated a "case" against Irina accusing her of "illegal actions with explosives."

The "proof" was the "discovery" of 200 grams of explosives in Irina's bag. And only on May 11, the lawyer managed to establish that she was in the occupation pre-trial detention center in Simferopol.

The "arrest warrant" was issued by the occupation "court" during a closed court session - without the participation of listeners, journalists, or Irina's relatives.

But the real reason for the detention is different. For covering the problems of the healthcare system, the crimes of the occupiers, as well as for protecting and promoting the rights of healthcare workers in the occupied Crimea.

Iryna was one of the first correspondents of the Crimean Process; she supported Crimean Tatar activists in the "courts"; prepared materials for the editorial office of Inzhyr Media; supported medical activists, recorded violations of rights under occupation.

According to Irina, she was kidnapped, taken to Simferopol and illegally detained in a basement, tortured and starved, and forced to sign a confession under threat of death, having been viciously planted with explosives after the "confession" had been forcibly extracted.

Complete hearing loss in the left ear, deprivation of necessary medications, suffering from headaches and earaches. This is what Iryna is going through now.

Irina was transferred to the Krasnodar Women's Correctional Colony No. 7 in Zelenokumsk. Every day, Irina's health condition deteriorated: in the occupation prisons, she gradually lost hearing in her left ear, developed otitis media, constant headaches and dizziness.

Back in July 2022, the political prisoner reported being beaten by an FSB convoy and psychological pressure exerted on her by Russian security forces. The occupiers also took away the opportunity to read, not returning the collection of poems.

To get medical help, she went on a hunger strike, but stopped it after 10 days, believing the promises of the SIZO administration, but no one has treated her and is not going to, watching the prisoner's health deteriorate.

According to her father, the colony allocates 90 minutes for the distribution of medicines twice a week: on Tuesday and Thursday. During this time, only 20-30 people out of a queue of several hundred prisoners manage to receive them.

"There are periodic fights among the patients for the opportunity to be in the front of the line and receive medicines. Iryna does not participate in this and has been deprived of access to the medicines prescribed by doctors, which we regularly send in parcels, for several months now," her father said.

Despite the illegal actions, torture and pressure, the occupiers failed to break the Ukrainian journalist, she continues to support Ukraine and believe that she will soon return home. "Only in such a strong Ukraine could such a strong you be born," said Iryna's father Bronislav.

Even behind bars, Iryna Danylovych continues to resist the occupiers and support Ukraine. The song "I am free!" performed by her is a symbol of disobedience and struggle, which the occupiers do not like, and the tattoo on her body that reads "Freedom is our religion" is her life's credo.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Peters fountain in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine

Russian vintage postcard

[marykk1990]

My next post in support of Ukraine is:

Next site, is the Aqmescit Friday Mosque (Акьмесджит Джума Джамиси) in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine. While building didn't start until 2015, after the illegal annexation of Crimea by muscovy, the mosque had been planned since 1996, but suffered from building delays. Much of the funding for construction was supplied to the Tatar community by Turkey. In 2008 the Tatar community put up a tent city on the location in protest of the delays by the city council & started bringing limestone blocks to the site themselves. The blocks also served as memorials to their ancestors as some of the blocks were inscribed with the names of deceased & deported family members.

#CrimeaIsUkraine

#StandWithUkraine

#СлаваУкраїні 🇺🇦🌻

[o-link]

MONDAY MORNING II VLADISLAV SPIVAK

Vladislav Spivak est un artiste d’origine russe vivant à Simferopol en Crimée, une presqu’île située au bord de la mer Noire et dont le rattachement géographique à l’Ukraine ou à la Russie est politiquement contesté. Spécialisé dans la photographie érotique depuis ses débuts, le travail artistique de Vladislav Spivak se dédie essentiellement au nu féminin. Diplômé en 2008, il s’éloigne du graphisme pour lequel il a été formé pour ne se consacrer qu’à la photographie afin d’entamer une carrière professionnelle dans ce domaine.

[olivia2010kroth]

Olivia Kroth: Lessons of Russian History – Remembering heroic Soviet tank driver Marya Oktyabrskaya, 80 years after her death

Lessons of Russian History: Remembering heroic Soviet tank driver Marya Oktyabrskaya, 80 years after her death by Olivia Kroth ln 1941, when the Nazi Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union, young people from all of the Soviet Republics took up arms, trained as fighters and participated in the Great Patriotic War to defeat the enemy and save the Motherland. One of those young people was the famous…

[beardedmrbean]

A worker at one of Europe's biggest safari parks was mauled to death by a group of lions after a cage was left unlocked.

The incident occurred at the Taigan Safari Park in Crimea on Wednesday, according to the Russian Investigative Committee's office, which said the worker did not lock the protective internal door that would have separated her from them while completing cleaning duties. It is believed there were three lions in the cage.

Authorities have launched a criminal investigation into potential negligence but have not yet determined whether the worker or the park management is at fault. Taigan's owner, Oleg Zubkov, identified the victim as chief zookeeper Leokadia Perevalova, praising her as the "soul of the park" on his blog. She had worked at Taigan for 17 years.

"Unfortunately when I arrived there was nothing I could do to help. [Lions are] top predators and they do not forgive mistakes, he said, adding that no other employees were present at the time of the attack.

The park is in Belogorsk, about 22 miles east of the Crimean capital of Simferopol. It covers more than 75 acres and houses about 60 lions and several other predators. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but most of the world does not recognize it as Russian territory.

This is not the first time the park has come under scrutiny for safety issues. Zubkov, who has been running parks since 1995, claims to have attended more than 300 legal cases related to fines and charges against him, many of which emerged following Russia's annexation of Crimea. He has often accused officials of unfairly targeting him and his park.

Just over half a mile of elevated walkways allow visitors to observe lions roaming freely, making it a popular attraction.

In 2018, a tourist was bitten by a lion while posing for a photo at the park. Zubkov dismissed the incident as isolated, but it raised questions about his approach to safety.

Additionally, the owner sparked controversy in 2019 when he threatened to euthanize more than 30 bears unless new homes could be found for them. Financial difficulties and ongoing legal pressures led him to issue a public plea, saying: "If no shelters take the bears, I'll have to shoot them."

He has said that without financial support from the government, the park relies entirely on revenue from ticket sales to stay operational.

In a previous cost-cutting measure, he had to resort to feeding dozens of Vietnamese pigs to the park's lions and tigers to cover the high costs of feeding the animals.

The legal system took charge in 2019, closing the doors of Taigan for 30 days after a complaint over expired feed being given to animals, an allegation Zubkov denies.