https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-5TakpVuXo
Thanks to the era of social media, Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t able to do much in his Crimean invasion that isn’t broadcast across the world. The above is a particularly heartwarming video, though, that flies in the face of the ethnic discord Putin has tried to stoke in the peninsula.
The video follows a group of Crimean Tatars in Bakhchisarai, between Sevastopol and Simferopol, as they take food to Ukrainian troops under siege by Russians who have surrounded their base. The Tatars offer a Russian soldier some bread, which he refuses, and they search the Tatars’ van. They then unloaded their food for the soldiers, passing bread loaves through a crack in the gate, jars under the fence and a pot of stew (carefully) over the wall. Driving off, we see how entrenched the Russians are around the base. The Tatars yell “long live Ukraine” at the Russians.
In another memorable moment yesterday, former tycoon and Putin political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose release was one of Putin’s pre-Olympics PR stunts, addressed the Euromaidan crowd in Kiev.
“I want you to know there is another Russia,” Khodorkovsky told the crowd. “There are people who despite the arrests, despite the long years they have spent in prison, go to anti-war demonstrations in Moscow, people for whom friendship between the Russian and Ukrainian people is stronger than their own freedom.”
The crowd chants “spasibo” at the end – “thank you” in Russian.
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