Аn Important Rendezvous (for the American Friends of ABN)

On April 25, 2025, key representatives of the Circassian, Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian communities in the NY-NJ-CT (tri state) region gathered together with the Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, the Honorable Refat Chubarov for a ‘discussion dinner’ at a well regard Turkish restaurant in New York City. Chairman Chubarov began the discussion with a clear statement of the Crimean Tatar position regarding the current Russia-Ukraine War ceasefire talks. To him, Crimea was and had to remain part of Ukraine; only in that manner could the Crimean Tatar ”narod’ survive and thrive. Any attempt at the dismantling of the Ukrainian state (with the permitted annexation of Crimea by Moscow) would threaten a repeat of the genocides that the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians had suffered in the past. Mr. Ed Youghar, a leading figure in the Circassian community, picked up on the theme of genocide; he went on to shortly elaborate on the Circassian genocide of the 19th century as the first of many examples of Russia’s long standing genocidal colonial policy (where White, or Red, or KGB Blue). He expressed the hope that, as Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars regained all they had lost, they would eventually help the Circassians regain what they had lost. The latter point gave Volodymyr Zaryckyj, head of the Ukrainian American Freedom Foundation and an American Friends of ABN representative, a perfect opening for his words. In his remarks to the assembled, Zaryckyj assured the Circassians the recently renewed ABN (aptly renamed the Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations) would not forget their cause or the cause of the other nations still trapped in a prison of nations known as the “Russian Federation. The evening ended with a clear agreement by the parties gathered that the ultimate end towards which all should strive was the disintegration of the Russian state as presently constituted.