KYIV – On May 18, Ukraine remembered the victims of Joseph Stalin’s genocidal deportation of the Crimean Tatar people from Crimea. On that day in 1944, the first trainloads of Crimean Tatars were forcibly resettled from the peninsula to Central Asia and Siberia. In total, about 200,000 people were deported via cattle cars by the Stalin regime. Thousands died en route, and tens of thousands more died due to the harsh conditions of exile.
In 2015, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine had declared May 18 as the annual Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Crimean Tatar Genocide.
The Mejlis, the highest executive-representative body of the Crimean Tatars, called for raising the Crimean Tatar flag with a mourning ribbon and urged the public to light candles in their windows on the night of May 17-18.