Two picture galleries from Russian media:
Two Armies of the Same Peninsula in the Russian Forbes. The unglamorous, amaterish- and/or provincial-looking guys with not so great physique, some still wearing Soviet-style regulation fur hats, are Ukrainian soldiers. The balaclava-wearing commandos with their fancy equipment and weapons are “Crimean self-defense forces.”
The weaponry of Crimea’s “polite people”. Apparently, the “self-defense forces” – by all signs Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms – are known locally as the “polite people” because they have been instructed to avoid putting themselves in situations potentially leading to violence and bloodshed.
A Russian link: More evidence that the “self-defense” forces are Russian. (Don’t have the time to translate, sorry.)
More on sanctions and the UK economy by Oliver Bullough.