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The Daily Vertical: How We Talk About Crimea (Transcript)


Isn't it funny how all of the sudden everybody is talking about Crimea as if it were Russian territory, and not as if it were territory that Russia illegally and forcefully annexed from Ukraine?

Isn't it strange how people are speculating about whether or not Ukrainian spies breached the "border" with Crimea to conduct terrorist attacks, when in fact -- legally speaking -- no such border exists?

Crimea, legally speaking, is Ukraine.

And isn't it odd that we're having another he-said-she-said debate about the details of one alleged incident, and forgetting about the larger reality?

Of course not. The Kremlin tricks us into doing this all the time.

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Now, it's way too early to unpack what actually did or did not happen in Crimea over the past few days.

And to put it mildly, I'm more than a little bit skeptical of Moscow's official version that the FSB foiled a terrorist attack that Ukrainian agents were attempting to launch on the Russian-occupied peninsula.

There's scant evidence of this so far, other than the statements of Russian officials and accounts posted by pro-Russian bloggers online.

And the Kremlin regime's long track record of making things like this up out of whole cloth makes one very reluctant to give it the benefit of the doubt.

But one thing is clear as day.

Vladimir Putin's regime now has all of us talking about Crimea exactly the way they want us to.

And that may have been the point all along.

Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page.

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