Reported Blockade in Eastern Ukraine, Russian State TV Suggests Nuking US

Like someone who can’t help but
give their Adidas track pants-wearing ex a second chance, the
Crimean peninsula voted yesterday to join the Russian Federation.
With this victory, Russia is appearing more aggressive; there are
reports of a blockade in yet another region of Ukraine, and
state-run media is taunting the U.S. with nuclear threats.

Although reports
indicate that achieving 96.7 percent approval of the referendum
in the military-occupied territory involved some creative tactics,
such as herds of unregistered voters getting OK’d and individuals
exercising their right on multiple ballots, it seems like there’s
no turning back. Some ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars
considered the legislation illegal and boycotted the vote, but
don’t know how to right the situation.

One Tatar politician
said, “I don’t know of any situations in the history of
human civilization when injustice could be the basis for even the
slightest positive expectation of things changing for the
better.”

A Turkish news agency
spoke to some Crimean residents who said they may simply leave
the region and move to the Ukrainian mainland.

Russia’s appetite for annexation may not yet be satisfied,
though. Tens of thousands of Russian troops began conducting
training exercises along the eastern border of Ukraine last week.
Today, echoing the action in Crimea before the invasion,
Ukrainska Pravda reports
that 50 armed members of a so-called “Anti-Fascist Committee”
wearing symbols
of the Russian military are setting up roadblocks in one eastern
region.

Meanwhile, as Reason‘s Matthew Feeney highlighted, the
U.S. and E.U. have imposed sanctions on Russian government
officials and President Obama suggested that further economic
action may take place.

Judging by reports on Russia’s state-controlled television
stations, threats from the West aren’t accomplishing much. The
independent Moscow Times reports:

An anchor on state-run television threatened that Russia could
“turn the U.S. into radioactive ashes” and showed a simulation of a
Russian nuclear strike during his program on the U.S. response to
Russia’s interference in Ukraine.

Dmitry Kiselyov… accused U.S. President Barack Obama of
supposedly dithering in talks with President Vladimir Putin, and
suggested on his Sunday program that the U.S. leader was
intimidated by his Kremlin opponent, who is “not an easy one.”

[…]

Kiselyov also suggested that threats of a nuclear strike were
coming from the Kremlin.

“I do not know if this is a coincidence or what, but here was
Obama calling Putin on Jan. 21 — probably, again trying to pressure
somehow — and the very next day, on Jan. 22, the official media
outlet of the Russian government ran an article that spelled out in
simple terms how our system of nuclear response works,” he
said.

Read more Reason coverage of Ukraine here.