One can only speculate about the reasons why the Russian leadership has just now decided to arrest the last Crimean Tatar leaders still living in Crimea. It is quite possible that this is actually a reaction to the meeting of the international Crimean platform that took place in Kiev in August with the participation of many European governments. Ukraine's goal is to use this platform to put the illegal occupation of Crimea back on the agenda of international politics. It is not to be expected that the Russian leadership will be impressed by this. But Moscow's irritated reactions also showed that people in the Kremlin find it annoying to keep being asked about the land grab.
The Crimean Tatars are therefore a thorn in the flesh of the Russian leadership. They are the population group on the peninsula that has not come to terms with the annexation. And their fate does not fit in with all the historical myths with which Moscow has allegedly established a historical claim to Crimea that has existed for ages. They were there before Russians and Ukrainians, and their deportation to Central Asia at Stalin's behest in 1944, as well as the continued refusal of his successors to allow them to return to their homeland until the end of the 1980s, show the figures celebrated by Putin's people as historical heroes as what they were: criminals.