Yellow Ribbon activists hand over letters with stories of resistance in the temporarily occupied Crimea to the European Parliament Members

Along with the letters, the MEPs were handed tickets for the first trains to Ukrainian Crimea, which they will be able to use after the de-occupation of the peninsula and the resumption of passenger traffic by Ukrzaliznytsia.

The letters were addressed to 14 European parliamentarians. Among them is the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola.

First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Emine Dzhaparova, representatives of the Yellow Ribbon in the temporarily occupied Crimea, Qırımtatarlar activists, and other opinion leaders also joined in writing the letters: 

Permanent Representative of the Mission of the President of Ukraine in ARC Tamila Tasheva;

Akhtem Seitablaiev, film director, actor, Honoured Artist of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine; 

Sevgil Musaieva, editor-in-chief of the online media outlet Ukrainska Pravda, co-founder of the NGO Crimea SOS; 

sister of the Crimean Tatar activist Bohdan Ziza, illegally imprisoned by the occupiers, 

civil society activist Oleksandra Barkova; 

Timur Yashchenko, director and screenwriter of the film U311 Cherkasy; 

a Crimean woman, an anonymous conductor of evacuation trains of Ukrzaliznytsia. 

"Even after nine years of occupation, the resistance movement in Crimea remains strong. It lives on in the Ukrainian songs that Crimeans continue to listen to despite the bans. In political prisoners who did not betray their homeland. The blue and yellow flag, which recently flew in the village of Grushivka, announces that Crimea is waiting to return to Ukraine," Dzhaparova wrote in her letter.

"Yellow Ribbon is a civil resistance movement formed in the territories temporarily occupied by Russia in the spring of 2022. So far, more than 7,000 activists from Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and other temporarily occupied territories have joined the movement. They are engaged in information resistance, hanging yellow ribbons, blue and yellow flags and other Ukrainian symbols on the streets, organising protest flash mobs on social media and collecting information about Russians and collaborators.