Putin’s Words No Solace as East Ukraine Braces for Storm
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Vladimir Putin’s assurances that eastern Ukraine isn’t in his cross hairs rang hollow in the beat-up black Lada taking Anna Gerashchenko to a makeshift army outpost on the Russian border.
“I’m helping the troops because I’m afraid eastern Ukraine will soon look like Crimea,” said Gerashchenko, a 35-year-old NGO worker, as she ferried a trunk full of cookies, socks and blankets to soldiers of her country’s underfunded army with her two young children in the backseat for the bumpy 25-kilometer (16 miles) drive from Kharkiv. “It doesn’t matter what Putin says. He’s a liar.”