On March 18, 2014, Vladimir Putin announced the incorporation of Crimea and Sevastopol into Russia. Since then, many people from the peninsula have lived between several legal and personal realities: some kept two citizenships, others faced non-recognition of their documents, and many decided to leave after the full-scale war began.
Vitaly says that even in 2014 he saw what was happening as something wrong. He stayed in Crimea although he repeatedly considered leaving, and after February 24, 2022, his fear deepened. He says mobilization was the final push into exile. He and his girlfriend first went to Georgia and then to Poland, where they tried to restore their Ukrainian documents after discovering that their records could not be found in Ukrainian databases.
“When you are from Crimea, it feels like you belong neither here nor there,” Vitaly says, explaining how hard it is to fully identify with any side.
Marina, who was 17 in 2014, says she initially treated the events as the backdrop to her own life, but later concluded that the annexation was illegal. After the war began and security officers searched her partner’s home, her sense of personal safety, she says, disappeared immediately. A few months later, the couple left Crimea for Georgia.
Marina now lives using a Russian foreign passport issued in Crimea and says it constantly creates obstacles. Ukrainian consulates told her that her papers were invalid or that there was no access to Crimean archives, so confirming her identity and obtaining Ukrainian documents has taken years.
Antonina also decided to leave after the war started, first because she feared for her life and later because of fears of the Russian authorities and mobilization. Through Georgia and Belarus, she reached Poland, where she received temporary protection as a Ukrainian refugee. Later, in Krakow, she was helped to obtain a temporary identity document, and after three years she was finally able to travel to Ukraine and confirm her identity.
The people featured in the article describe not only legal difficulties but also an inner crisis. They speak about guilt, a sense of being torn between Ukrainian origins and life under Russian jurisdiction, and longing for Crimea as a distinct and deeply original place that remains part of their personal history regardless of borders or documents.