At 6am on Thursday, a group of seven Russian soldiers raided Leila Ibragimova’s home in Melitopol in southeastern Ukraine.
Ibragimova, an ethnic Crimean Tatar, is a well-known figure in the city, which has fallen under the control of the Russian army following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A deputy of Zaporizhzhia Regional Council and director of the Melitopol Municipal Museum, she has been a strong advocate for her constituency, including the local population of about 12,000 Crimean Tatars – a Muslim group indigenous to nearby Crimea, a territory Russia annexed in 2014.
