Our troops? Nyet!

Baz Ratner/Reuters — An armored vehicle with a Russian military plate in the Crimean town of Balaklava on Saturday.

Russia’s Defense Minister Calls Evidence of Troop Presence in Crimea ‘Complete Nonsense’

By ROBERT MACKEY, NYT

Russia’s defense minister and foreign minister both denied on Wednesday that there were any Russian troops among the large contingent of masked men in armored vehicles with Russian military plates blockading government buildings and Ukrainian military installations in Crimea.

The defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, dismissed visual evidence — including numerous photographs and video clips taken by foreign correspondents and residents of the region — as “an act of provocation,” the state news agency Itar-Tass reported. Asked about viral video said to show soldiers on the Crimean side of the Kerch Strait, at the peninsula’s closest point to southern Russia, admitting that they were Russian, the minister said anyone who made such a claim was uttering “complete nonsense.”

The defense minister also said that he had “no idea” where the groups of mostly silent soldiers in unmarked uniforms the Kremlin calls local “self-defense units” got military vehicles with Russian plates, including trucks and armored carriers known as Tigers.

(More here.)