Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Refat Chubarov believes that foreign citizens, including the Russian Federation, who moved to live in occupied Crimea, should immediately leave the peninsula.

“Our position ... is absolutely clear: all foreigners or stateless persons who settled in occupied Crimea, as well as in other occupied territories of Ukraine, deliberately committed a crime. They, like looters, came for stolen goods, so they must immediately leave our Crimea. There will be no other position. We will not allow Russia, which, fleeing Crimea, will actually try to stay on the peninsula in the form of a huge army of colonists,” Chubarov said at the second parliamentary summit of the International Crimea Platform in Prague on Tuesday.

He emphasized that the Russian Federation, constantly persecuting the Crimean Tatar people, “is hastily populating Crimea with its own citizens.”

“There are already more than a million such colonists in Crimea,” Chubarov noted.

Chubarov does not share the opinion in defense of such people that they “have become hostages of complex geopolitical processes and may they continue to live in the liberated Crimea.”

Chubarov also reiterated the need to create national-territorial autonomy in Crimea in the future.

“The position of the Crimean Tatar people is as follows: the Crimean peninsula is an integral part of Ukraine, and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol created on its territory are subject to transformation into a national-territorial autonomy, which will exercise the powers defined by the Constitution of Ukraine and ensure the inviolability of the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian state, the implementation by the indigenous Crimean Tatar people of the right to self-determination, equal human rights and freedoms, constant development of the Crimean peninsula,” the chairman of the Mejlis said.