There's no twisting involved. Crimea was taken over by a Russian Special Force unit - probably the 45th Guards Separate Reconnaissance Regiment of VDV by analysis of their battledress, equipment and doctrine - and the referendum held under their occupation. That is the very definition of at gunpoint.rowan wrote:No, only the brainwashed would imagine it would be necessary to point a gun at the ethnic Russian majority to force them to vote in favor of breaking away from a regime that was waging war on ethnic Russians at the time (and still is). Twisting sentences so that they mean something entirely different isn't very clever, you know.Stones of granite wrote:Oh, that's right. Only the brainwashed think there's a problem with holding a referendum at gun-point.rowan wrote:No, I'm just not brainwashed enough to imagine Crimea's ethnic Russian majority were forced into reunification with Moscow against their wishes, even as Ukrainians were burning ethnic Russians to death in Odessa.
Neither am I brainwashed enough to imagine that Russia is the problem when it is America rampaging through the Middle East, bombing countries to smithereens, destabilizing others with terrorists, and installing, backing and arming murderous dictators, monocracies and, in one case, an Apartheid regime.
The conflict between ethnic Russians and Ukraine in Eastern Ukraine was another of Putin's "deniable" operations, and the land-grab and illegal annexation of Crimea was part of his maneuverings. He correctly calculated that Ukraine wouldn't risk opening a second front against Russia, and giving him a causus belli to switch from a covert war to an overt war in Donbass.