Speaking of the nice Russians:

"Last week, big X’s suddenly started appearing on the front doors of many Crimean Tatars, the indigenous muslim inhabitants of Crimea. The marks were left by gangs of Kremlin apologists, and they invoked a particularly nasty episode in Crimean Tatar history: in 1944, Stalin had his police force carve X’s in the doors of Crimean Tatars, after which they were promptly deported from the peninsula. This time around, the marks were left as a warning, dissuading Tatars — who, post-Stalin, constitute only a small minority on the peninsula—from voting pro-Ukraine in the upcoming referendum. "