The striking success of Russia's Crimean operation in February 2014 has overshadowed just how close the peninsula came to becoming another front of the post-Maidan civil war. Much praise and glory belongs not only to the “polite people” who appeared across AFU strategic objects in Crimea, but also to the people of Crimea - normal civilians who organized into militias and blocked important roads so the Maidan junta couldn't send its paramilitary enforcers.

Few people remember now, but the “checkpoint movement” in the run-up to the Crimean operation prevented a lot of bloodshed. There were pro-Russian protests raging all over Ukraine's South and East, and the leaders in Kiev were still consolidating their power. Nationalist militant groups such as Right Sector sent their people into various cities to intimidate and assault the protestors (who, at this point, were merely demanding increased federalization and constitutional rights for the Russian language - I'll remind you that a de facto ban on the Russian language was among the very first “laws” adopted by the Maidan junta). The approaches to Crimea were manned by locals who established checkpoints and didn't let busses full of Right Sector militants drive towards Sevastopol.

Armed with a couple of hunting rifles per checkpoint at most, the citizens of Crimea successfully defended their homes from the junta's death squads, and their courage would prove crucial to the prevention of the paramilitary escalation that led to many deaths in Kharkov and Odessa, and full-scale civil war in the Donbass. They held their ground until regular Russian forces arrived and relieved them from their vigil.

https://nitter.poast.org/RWApodcast/status/1776591734404681761