Putin’s Man in Crimea Is Ukraine’s Worst Nightmare

The Times ^

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Putin’s Man in Crimea Is Ukraine’s Worst Nightmare Simon Shuster / Simferopol @shustry 7:33 PM ET

Sergei Aksyonov, the pro-Russian Prime Minister of Crimea who is driving the region toward secession from Ukraine, is at the center of an international crisis. But little is known about a man who rose from obscurity in the space of a month and who some claim is a former gangster nicknamed the 'Goblin'

A month ago, when Ukraine’s old regime was just starting to crack under the pressure of a revolution, few people in the country had ever heard of Sergei Aksyonov. He was then a marginal figure even in the local politics of the region of Crimea. His Russian Unity party had only three seats in the regional legislature and no representation anywhere else. But that has not stopped him from taking charge. In late January, as the protesters in Kiev began seizing government buildings, Aksyonov started to form an army on the Crimean peninsula. Now he is the de facto leader of the entire region, a post that has thrust him into the center of the most dire political crisis Europe has confronted in years.

[ResisTyr]

*OR* the quiet coup (damn auto speller)

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

We can throw stones since our house is made of strong steel in comparison to the Russkie communists.

[dfwgator]

(Khrushchev was Ukranian)

Wrong. He was an ethnic Russian, born near the border with Ukraine, who served as Stalin's man in the Ukraine in the 1940s.