UROZHAYNE, Crimea—Elnara Asanova lives alone with her four small children because her husband, an ethnic Tatar, is in jail. Last April, when she was seven months pregnant, police grabbed him from the streets of their village because he had taken part in a Tatar protest against Russian annexation of Crimea.
She is not allowed to visit him, so she travels to every court hearing. Once she took 7-month-old Mustafa, so her husband could glimpse the child as he was led from the police van to the courtroom. The court has refused to release him on bail, describing him as a flight risk.
“They say he will run away. But where to?” said Elnara, a meek young woman. She points to her children. “We live in the country. You can’t survive here without a husband.”
Two years after Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin touts the move as a historic achievement, looking on with a satisfied smile from countless billboards across the peninsula. However, overwhelming opposition from the Muslim Tatar ethnic minority puts a crack in this picture of unanimous support, as evidenced in interviews with more than two dozen Tatars across Crimea. And the resistance appears to be growing.
