On May 18, 1944, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars was started by the Soviet regime. Crimean Tatars were groundlessly accused of mass desertion from the Red Army and mass collaboration with the Nazi occupiers.

For more than 20 years since then, the Soviet authorities have completely denied the criminal nature of their actions. Only in 1967, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized total accusation of the Crimean Tatars was unjust. Still, they did not get the right to return to the Crimea unlike other "punished peoples". Only in 1989, the Soviet parliament recognized that deportation was illegal.

The main wave of massive forced eviction of the Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan from the place they resided, the Crimean peninsula, was started at 3 am on May 18 and almost completed on May 20, 1944. 32 thousand People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs’ (NKVD) employees were involved. The deportees had barely half an hour for getting ready to move. They were allowed to take personal belongings, utensils, household equipment and supplies in the amount of up to 500 kg per family. In reality, it was possible to collect on average 20-30 kg of things and products. Most of their property remained and was confiscated by the state.

Within 2 days the Crimean Tatars were driven by cars to the railway stations of Bakhchisarai, Dzhankoy and Simferopol, from where the trains were sent to the east. During the main wave of deportation 180 014 people were forcibly evicted. Together with 6 thousand Crimean Tatar boys mobilized during April-May 1944 and being sent to the military reserves located in Atyrau (Kazakhstan), Kuibyshev and Rybinsk (Russia), as well as 5 thousand Crimean Tatars who were sent to work at Moskowugol Trust camps, the total number of exiles was 191 044 persons. Separately, 5 989 people were arrested by accusation in collaboration with the Nazi and other "anti-Soviet elements". They were imprisoned to the Gulag and in the future were not taken into account in general statistics.

This deportation caused catastrophic consequences for the Crimean Tatars in the places of their exile. Over one year till the war ended more than 30 thousand Crimean Tatars died of hunger, diseases and exhaustion. The economy of Crimean Peninsula also suffered as much being deprived of experienced workers.

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine by its Resolution «On Recognition of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People» recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 as a genocide of the Crimean Tatar people. In Ukraine May 18 was set on as the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Crimean Tatars genocide. The Ukrainian parliament stated that the systemic pressure on the Crimean Tatar people, the repression of Ukrainian citizens by nationality, the organization of ethnically and politically motivated persecutions by the state agencies of the Russian Federation toward Crimean Tatars and their self-government bodies, such as the Mejlis and Kurultai, in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, starting from the date of the beginning of the temporary occupation, is a deliberate policy of the ethnocide of the Crimean Tatar people.