https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrJGSb8Vxyg

Today is a terrible anniversary. On May 18, Ukraine commemorates more than 200,000 Crimean Tatars, who were forcibly deported from Crimea by the Soviet authorities in 1944. As a result of forced deportation, they lost their home, homeland, relatives, and many lost their lives. Since that time, Russia has not changed anything in its actions and in its policy. It continues to kill, destroy and deport.

In memory of these tragic events and at the request of Yuliya Puchko-Kolesnyk, head of the girls' choir of the Kyiv Lysenko State Music Lyceum, I made an arrangement for a mixed a cappella choir of the unofficial anthem of the Crimean Tatars, the Crimean Tatar folk song "Ey, güzel Qırım ".

The melody and lyrics of the song "Ey, güzel Qırım" cannot leave anyone indifferent and move to tears. All the eternal longing of the Crimean Tatar people with their tragic fate - being exiles in their native land - was concentrated in them. All of us, both children and adults, all who worked on this project, fell deeply in love with this melody, this language and culture, putting the sincere warmth of our hearts and souls into our work. Because Crimea is Ukraine!

I thank everyone who was involved in this wonderful recording: to the leaders-conductors and choirmasters of the choir - Yulia Puchko-Kolesnyk, Ruben Tolmachov, Vira Shemchuk, Vladyslav Tarakhan; soloists - Ruben Tolmachov, Oleksandra Stetsyuk, Valeriya Husak, Mykyta Tsyganov; to all members of the girls' choir of the M.V. Lysenko Kyiv State Music Lyceum and the chamber choir "Gaudeamus" of the P.I. Tchaikovsky Charitable Foundation for the Development of NMAU. Huge thanks to our beloved and constant sound engineer Andriy Mokrytskyi for his traditionally impeccable work.