On a cloudy afternoon in the Crimean capital of Simferopol, two girls are shyly dropping off yellow flowers at a statue of an armed soldier with no label on his uniform. The figures depict the man being greeted by a little girl and a cat is rubbing against his legs.
The statue represents one of the "little green men" or "polite people" – the unmarked Russian special forces. They had taken over the Peninsula in February 2014, before it was annexed away from Ukraine with a referendum that...
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