Poetins favoriete motorclub onderweg naar de Krim

As reported earlier, Night Wolves leader Aleksandr Zaldostanov, known as “Surgeon,” has arrived in Simferopol and is asking local residents “what they need.” He said his club plans to “deliver humanitarian aid,” and told RIA Novosti that medicine and other goods will be “brought to Sevastopol from Stalingrad.” (Yes, that’s what he called the city which is usually named “Volgograd” in modern Russia). Zaldostanov also said his club would bring ATVs, which would be helpful to Ukrainians “to maintain connections between checkpoints.” The Night Wolves are notorious for their close ties to the Kremlin; last year President Vladimir Putin awarded Zaldostanov the prestigious Order of Honour for his “active work in patriotic upbringing of the young” and for helping search for the remains of missing World War II soldiers, RBTH reported.

Ekho Moskvy said the situation was tense in Crimea as “the region does not recognize the change in government in Ukraine.” That doesn’t do justice to the conflicting reports of Crimean Tatars in Crimea who mainly support the EuroMaidan protest movement and others not oriented toward Moscow. Ekho Moskvy, which has recently come under pressure from the Kremlin with a new general manager, said that a delegation of all the Russian State Duma’s factions is now in Crimea. Sergei Zheleznyak, United Russia vice speaker, said the Russian MPs would “conduct a dialogue only with the lawfully-elected authorities.”