Just a few of the characters whose stories illuminate little corners of the crisis in Crimea:
- Col. Yuli Mamchur, the Ukrainian fighter pilot who led a pocket of resistance against the Russian takeover until Russian troops took his base on Saturday and took him away. He had become the “face of Ukrainian resistance,” but no one has seen his face since he was taken for a meeting with senior Russian officers. “They won’t say where he is,” says his distraught wife.
New Crimean Attorney General Natalia Poklonskaya has become something of an Internet sensation since the 34-year-old (some reports say she’s 33, but she had a birthday last week) rose to the position last week. There’s the video of her taking charge (above). There are the sexy glamour shots. There’s the anime renderings of her out of Japan. There’s the silly new meme that holds that she “put the ‘cute’ in ‘prosecute’.” But the detail that tells us the most about the political situation in Crimea is this: The former attorney general had remained loyal to Ukraine, and she replaced him after, reportedly, four other men had turned down the job. Chaos can indeed lead to opportunity, can it not?- Ukrainian Lt. Col. Sergei Illushenko, the son of a former Soviet officer, saw this coming. Last month, he sent his wife and three kids to mainland Ukraine, bought a rolling pin and reinforced the grip with tape. Then he settled in to wait for the Russians to try to take his coast-guard artillery base. He’s still waiting. He and his men have guns, but hope not to have to use them in the crowded urban area where his base is located.
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We get John Mitchell. Crimea gets Natalia Poklonskaya. Maybe there’s something to be said for being taken over by Putin.
Speaking of which, there’s a pretty good assessment of what’s happening in Russia from our former ambassador Michael McFaul in today’s New York Times, headlined “Confronting Putin’s Russia.”
Yo, where IS everybody? I give you a sexy attorney general, and no comments at all?
Next you’ll tell me you’re not going to go check out her fan page…
Brad, it is a weird observation. Have you been channeling Maureen Dowd?
Hey, it’s a weird phenomenon. Her chief qualification for the job appears to be her willingness to refer to the new Ukrainian government as “devils from the ashes.”
Well, that, and the fact that she inspired the Daily Mail to come up with a headline that began, “BLI-MEA!“