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Washington Post: Inside a Russian disinformation campaign in Ukraine in 2014

Published Dec. 26, 2017 at 9:14 am

Armed men stand guard in front of the entrance of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people (the single highest executive-representative body of the Crimean Tatars) in Simferopol on September 16, 2014. Russian police on September 16 raided the assembly of pro-Kiev Crimean Tatars, activists told AFP, days after Crimean residents overwhelmingly backed pro-Kremlin parties in polls. Authorities also raided the homes of two Tatar activists in what the leader of the Tatar governing body, the Mejlis, called the start of "direct repressions" against the peninsula's pro-Kyiv community.

Photo by AFP

By the morning of Feb. 22, 2014, it was clear that the government of Viktor Yanukovych, the beleaguered pro-Russian president of Ukraine, had fallen, amid protests sparked by his decision not to move toward a closer relationship with the European Union.

Yanukovych’s Russian allies denounced his political collapse as a “coup,” and the crisis became a flashpoint in relations between the Kremlin and the West.