OP-ED
Paul Roderick Gregory: Russian combat medals put lie to Putin’s claim of no troops in Ukraine
Ukrainian military air base in the small city of Belbek near the Crimean city of Sevastopol on March 22, 2014.
Vladimir Putin was cynically playing with words when he declared, on his annual broadcast to the Russian people on April 16, 2015: “I can tell you outright and unequivocally [my italics] that there are no Russian troops in Ukraine.” Russian troops are indeed in Ukraine, but under the fiction that they signed “separation documents” from the army before being shipped to the Ukraine combat zone.
