Two stories describing One Event

[cthulu2016]

Crimean military and self-defense forces have prevented an attempt to sabotage and cripple the gas distribution center that feeds a number of socially critical facilities in the peninsula, including schools and medical centers, Crimean authorities said.

Around 11:00 GMT on Saturday the gas supply to Crimea was halted at one of the distribution centers near Strelkovaya, effectively cutting gas delivery to a number of areas in the eastern part of the Crimean peninsula. As a result a number of hospitals, medical centers, schools and apartment buildings were cut off from the gas supply.

A group of gas technicians, escorted by the Crimea’s newly created military, comprised of former Ukrainian troops who have sworn their allegiance to the republic, responded to the supply disturbance and set out to check the gas station. “There they encountered a group of at least 20 armed men in camouflage,” the Cabinet of Ministers of Crimea announced. “These people were planting explosives at the facility in order to knock it out of action completely.”

http://rt.com/news/gas-supply-crimea-sabotage-142/

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Tensions mounted on the eve of a secession referendum here in Crimea as helicopter-borne Russian forces made a provocative incursion just beyond the peninsula’s regional border to seize a natural gas terminal while American and European officials prepared sanctions to impose on Moscow as early as Monday.

The military operation by at least 80 troops landing on a slender sand bar just across Crimea’s northeast border seemed part of a broader effort to strengthen control over the peninsula before a vote Sunday on whether its majority Russian-speaking population wants to demand greater autonomy from Ukraine or break completely and join Russia. Whatever its tactical goals, it sent a defiant message to the United States and Europe and underscored that a diplomatic resolution to Russia’s recent takeover of Crimea remains elusive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/europe/russian-troops-seize-gas-plant-beyond-crimean-border-ukraine-says.html?partner=EXCITE&ei=5043&_r=0

[Fumesucker]

1. I'm reminded of Twain's War Prayer

http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.html

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

[joshcryer]

2. Russia is really channeling Soviet rhetoric these days.

Didn't that work out badly the first time around?

[newthinking]

3. There is a third version: Ukraine's news agency says they invaded the town, no mention of the gas

Facility.

http://un.ua/eng/article/498423.html