In December 2014, Serhiy Khodko, a local official under Moscow-installed authorities in Crimea, received a medal from Russia’s Defense Ministry “for the return” of the Ukrainian peninsula to Russian control.
Khodko, who has since passed away, was not only a deputy in the city council of the Crimean city of Kerch. He was also the director of a company called TIS Krym, which operates ferries from a Russian port across the Kerch Strait — and brought Russian personnel and hardware into Crimea as it seized and annexed the peninsula in March 2014.
