Drama in Ukraine: Crimean Muslims face the fate of Bosniaks

What is happening in Ukraine is a catastrophe. Putin's mercenaries come to hospitals, take away wounded people and kill them. We find them dead in the surrounding forests and sewage pipes, said Dr. Larisa Peleško, a doctor in a hospital in Kyiv, in an exclusive interview with the BiH news agency Patria (NAP).

She fears that the information that world media is reporting from Ukraine is not entirely correct. Because Putin controls everything, including the information coming out of Ukraine. Dr. Peleško explains that the worst situation is on the Crimean peninsula.

- The fate of Muslims in Crimea is almost identical to the situation of Bosniaks during the aggression against BiH. In case of war, Russians from Crimea can flee to Russia, Ukrainians have families in other parts of the country, and can save their lives. But Crimean Tatars, Muslims, have nowhere to go. They have no other homeland but Crimea - Peleško told NAP.

Dr. Peleško: The cause of the problems in Ukraine is Russian President Putin

- Putin is not interested in the problems of Muslims in Crimea. Because he doesn't like them anyway. The only help that Crimean Muslims currently have is from the people of Ukraine. Yesterday, 25 families of Crimean Muslims, with small children, fled to Lviv (Western Ukraine). Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholics gave them their houses, apartments, phones, food. Here, Orthodox, Catholics and Muslims pray together for peace - explains Peleško.

She says that because of the help that Western Ukraine offered to Crimean Muslims, Putin said that only extremists, fascists and terrorists live in this part of the country anyway.

Peleško says that Ukrainians are now realizing that Putin has actually been controlling the situation in Ukraine all along. His people were in the police, the army, the intelligence services...

- We asked Yanukovych to solve our social problems. People in Ukraine live very hard lives. Instead, seven days before signing the association agreements with the EU, he turned to Russia. He did not want to sign those association agreements. And when people took to the streets to protest against it, his special police and Russian mercenaries began to kill people. During the last weekend, about 320 people disappeared. Some were found by neighbors in sewage pipes, killed in the most brutal way - she says.  

Peleško says that Ukrainians are now mobilizing into a people's army so that they can defend themselves in case of war.

- Anyone who went out on the streets of Russia and held a banner saying "No to war" ended up in prison. But I hope that the Russian people will finally overthrow Putin, and we will help them in that - says Larisa Peleško.