A video has went viral in Ukraine which I will link to at the end of this post. Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea, locked up basically like animals in cages for days by armed Russian forces in the thousands who have surrounded their bases illegally and who wear no insignia, finally attempted to do their job. In today’s paranoid press conference by Putin, Putin claimed there are no Russian armed men in Crimea doing this but self-defense units who could simply buy army wear by themselves. (This of course is not true). These Russian forces have bazookas, machine guns, matching uniforms, masks. They may be Russian paratroopers, though Putin knows who they are for sure For over a week now Putin has been lying about threats to ethnic Russians in Ukraine, even staging fake scenes ostensibly showing such violence.
This article is informative:
Putin’s Crimea Propaganda Machine
To justify its invasion of Crimea, the Kremlin and state-run media went into full fabrication mode this weekend. Here are the lies that Russia is telling its viewers back home.
thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/03/putin-s-crimea-propaganda-machine.html
People are pointing out the obvious in saying that old KGB colonel Putin is now listening to FSB yes-men to fortify him in his delusions that Russians are under attack in Ukraine, which has been and would be his pretext for launching an invasion. He is even shipping in Russian citizens into Ukraine to tear down Ukrainian flags and raise Russian ones. This story, one among many along these lines, from CNN by a photographer who herself half-Russian:
I just talked to my friends in Crimea.
Yuri in Simferopol told me that it’s a handful of pro-Russian extremists in the streets trying to make a scene for Russian video cameras – they are showing that these are the Russians who request protection!
Meanwhile, the rest of the city is terrified by the presence of Russian military forces and are evacuating their families to central or western Ukraine.
I got a similar report from Luda in Kharkov. She said that a large group of Russians were brought across the border by buses, and they were the ones inspiring and instigating unrest that resulted in putting a Russian flag on a municipal building.
The amount of propaganda Russia has poured onto Ukraine is hard to comprehend. Putting troops on Ukrainian land is going to bring the very opposite result from what Putin expected: I believe it’s uniting Ukraine.
edition.cnn.com/2014/03/04/world/europe/ukraine-divided-opinion-irpt/index.html
Here is the video from the BBC showing the video I mentioned at the beginning. Brave young Ukrainian soldiers march out of their base to fulfill their job. They are singing the Ukrainian national anthem carrying a blue and yellow Ukrainian national flag, along with a Soviet flag with hammer and sickle which they hope will deter the Russians. The Russian military without insignia start firing in the air, and then one real rough-looking Russian says he’ll shoot at their legs next.
The first shots fired in Crimea have been by Russian forces, not Ukrainian who marched unarmed. To the Russian claim that this is a provocation, the Ukrainians reply we’re unarmed!
Putin is itching for a fight. This really could have turned fatal quite easily. The Ukrainian soldiers then played football, until some real mean-looking Russians showed up.
These boys’ moms and wives and girlfriends are worried about them. They are there legally. The Russian forces are there illegally and they have now used lethal weapons. The threat to Ukraine’s peace comes from Putin, not Ukrainians. Some of these Russian military were asked point blank who was giving them their orders “Sergei Aksyonov?” (the man who only got 4% of the vote in the last Crimean election but whom the Russians have made PM in Crimea and who Putin relies on as being the man who asked Russia for help). “Whose Aksyonov?”, the Russian military replied.
Here is the video of the event the BBC took (I’ll find more if need be). It’s gone viral in Ukraine and really united people.
Russian troops fire into air as Ukrainians march on Crimean airbase
bbc.com/news/world-europe-26443227