A background article, that starts with:
Western media are widely reporting that self-declared Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov was an organised crime boss in the 1990s, with the nickname ‘Goblin.’ The link between crime and politics in Crimea seems to have caught Western media off guard, and yet abundant evidence of such links has been available for a long time from a variety of sources, including US diplomatic cables.
Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russ...kileaks-Cables