The flag of the Tatars was the rallying call for an estimated 10,000 protesters outside the Crimean regional parliament in Simferopol. It was a show of unity by a people who see themselves as Russian but citizens of Ukraine. <br /><br /> Their ancestors were purged from the region in 1944 during Soviet rule by Stalin. An official apology with a call to return to Ukraine was given by Kyiv in 1991. They do not want the country to be divided. <br /><br /> “I am an ethnic Russian but I want to live in the territory of Ukraine,” stressed one of the Tatars.<br /><br /> There were reports of some minor clashes with pro-Russian demonstrators calling for the region to return to rule from Moscow. There are reports that some of the protesters raised a Russian flag on the parliament building. <br /><br /> The Crimea was gifted to Ukraine in 1954 by the then General Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Krushchev. <br /><br /> The Kremlin’s Black Sea fleet is harboured in the city of Sevastopol.
