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Can a flame face the night?
This is the battle waged by a resistance movement to the Russian occupation: Atesh, or fire in the Crimean Tatar language.
The organization's approximately 1,800 agents operate today in Crimea, as in other occupied territories, and even in Russia.
One of these resistance fighters nicknames himself “
Dzhokhar
” – in homage to Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Chechen separatist who defied Moscow.
Although Dzhokhar is currently in “
free
” Ukraine, from where he coordinates the actions of agents on the ground, his distrust remains extreme: he refuses any meeting or even a video call.
Only his voice remains.
“
The pressure is continually growing,
” he said.
The Russians make arrests.
Internet can be suspended at any time.
The FSB is sending more and more men to Crimea from Moscow.
» Dzhokhar speaks slowly;
he detaches and weighs each word.
“
To communicate
,” he explains, “
we cannot use Signal
(an encrypted messaging service, Editor’s note)
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