"People's will" isn't expressed during an armed invasion at a referendum without supervision and with ballots already filled up.
Three errors in once sentence. Speechless! Highlighted them for you. Now go and do some research, please.
Supervised by the Russian Army?
Damn Soviets! Invite a bunch of fellows to play as observers and second the bullshit doesn't count.
Any referendum would need a campaign, a free campaign from both sides, public discussion, time for put the observers and prepare the operation. A referendum within 2 weeks with the Russian army around is a plain load of bullshit. Just a Soviet tactic to make it look like "the people's will".
It's not exactly the Russian Army, but Spetsnaz. Quoting from Jane's:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has consistently denied that what the Ukrainian media widely refers to as the 'little green men' currently controlling key facilities in Crimea are Russian troops, maintaining a pretence that they are instead 'local self-defence groups'.
Further to the CPC report, images passed to IHS Jane's by another source close to the OSCE clearly show many examples of equipment specific to the Russian military - and in some cases Russian special forces (Spetsnaz) - being used by the 'little green men' in Crimea. Among these are: Spetsnaz-style muzzle brakes on Russian AK-100 series assault rifles; VSS (Vintorez) suppressed 9 mm sniper rifles issued primarily to Spetsnaz units for undercover or clandestine operations; Russian RPG-26 anti-tank rocket launchers; Russian NVD 1P93 and USP-1 weapon sights; Russian 6B43 bulletproof vests, 6Sh117 tactical vests and ShBM helmets; and Russian R-168-0,5UME tactical radios.
Even if there was special ops presence (which I am not saying there was - Ukrainian military uses much the same equipment as the Russian one), the key question is what were they used for?
- To coerce local population of Russians to vote? No - no need. The locals have been eager to reunite with Russia for 60 years now, more so after the dissolvement of the Soviet Union, when Crimea's development stopped. Have you been to Crimea? It was like taking a time machine back to the end of 1980-s.
- To prevent possible sabotage/provocations from fascist militants? Yes. Quite a large number of weapons were confiscated by self-defence (or however you want to call them) that were attempted smuggled into Crimea prior to referendum. That included explosives, sniper rifles, sidearms, and blunt weapons.
- To prevent the more radically inclined elements in local majority from doing anything silly as a result of possible provocations? Quite possible.
All we know that there was no blood shed before or during the referendum, which transitioned into peaceful folk street celebrations as the voting stations were closed for the day. If they were indeed special ops, they did their job well in preserving human lives.
