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I don't care for him either, but I don't recall him lying or at least getting caught doing so.

Then you haven't been paying attention. Plenty of lies tied up in the Crimea referendum vote: Reports of multiple voting, falsified turnout cast doubt on results of Crimea referendum

...... But until now no one has examined the conduct of the referendum or the accuracy of Putin’s claim that more than 82 percent of the electorate took part and that 96 percent of them favored joining Russia, a result some U.S. politicians seem to accept..........

.........But there are many reasons to doubt that the referendum was conducted fairly and that the result was what Putin announced.

A reporter for the local Tatar ATR television station said he was able to register and vote in four separate polling stations. In Sevastopol, the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, initial results spoke of a 123 percent turnout. The ATR television station showed film of Russian “bikers” visiting one polling location and a man departing carrying a submachine gun.

Putin’s claim of a 96 percent margin out of an 82 percent turnout also appears to be mathematically impossible. Both the local Ukrainian community and the Tatars, who make up just under 30 percent of the 2.2 million residents of Crimea, organized a boycott. Even with defections, and there were some, both the alleged turnout and margin of victory would be impossible, without many pro-Russian voters casting ballots multiple times.

Putin “was using percentages out of North Korea,” said Vladimir Kazarin, a professor of journalism at Simferopol’s Russian language Vernadsky University and a former high official in the Crimean and Sevastopol government. “It’s not truthful.”

“I’ve been following Crimean politics for a long time,” he told McClatchy. “I know what an election is, and what voting is. And I know our people. Even if they are in favor of something, they never vote more than 65 to 70 per cent. Some go to drink vodka. Some go fishing. Some go out with women.”

Kazarin said he was also certain that while two thirds of Russian voters would have approved secession from Ukraine, at least one third of Crimea’s self-identified Russian speakers would have made the other choice _ to remain in Ukraine, where conditions are more advantageous for running small businesses.

While it is impossible to know from publicly available data, Kazarin estimated that at most 60 per cent of Crimeans took part in the referendum, but said it could be as low as 50 per cent.

Mustafa Dzhemilev, 70, a survivor of the Tatars deportation of 1944 and a member of the Ukrainian parliament, said last week that data sent by local officials to the Russian FSB intelligence agency showed that only 34.2 per cent of the Crimean population took part in the referendum. He didn’t say how he got the numbers, but Smedlyayev of the Tatars’ election commission endorsed the claim. “I always trust the information that Dzhemilev gets from his secret channels,” he said.

As for local pro-Russian officials’ claims that 40 per cent of the Tatars voted, Tatar leaders here reacted with disbelief. Nariman Dzhelyalov, deputy leader of the Tatar Mejlis, of the 185,000 Tatars eligible to vote, at most 1,000 took part. He said that estimate is based on reports from 300 observers deployed to watch the turnout in every town or village where Tatars comprise half or more of the population. ....................

Lie after lie after lie......and I only posted part of the article. No matter how much you despise Obama, it does not change the fact that Putin is a lying KGB thug.

Everything you wrote is exactly the same as BO and this administration in how it operates.....as does the EU/NATO. If a nations leaders do not play in their ball-park, according to their agenda, then they take them out via revolutions and various other means. Egypt, though they failed there, Libya, Syria are all prime examples....and Russia of course.

Russia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, are all nation states who ‘refuse’ to go along with the Eu/Nato/Us Globalist Agenda to set up World Governance. When they don't comply under “other” pressures, such as human rights, environmental issues and the like...then they will use the measures we see playing out now in Ukraine.

When you rise above the people of the nations, and their sincere desires for freedom, to the level of actual powers who are operating in all nations, on the ground, with their politicians they can and do manipulate, then you can see the whole picture.

If you only observe what the people are saying you will miss entirely the agenda's and the push from those who are outside the nations creating the chaos for their own advantage.

There is a very real strategic war going on..and it's being fought by proxy, and this orchestrated, funded and devised by those our mainstream news will not or cannot report of.

What you are failing perhaps to see is Russia is being opposed because Putin will not go along to play in their court...why do you think Brics was formed? And the Eurasia group? Not to mention China's moves on our country and throughout the world, who also oppose the Eu/Nato/US agenda.

There are land grabs going on all over, for the resources each nation can bring to the table of those who stand to gain by doing so...and it's not about the welfare of the people. Have you not questioned why Germany is reluctant to stand with the EU....Merkle's tired of playing the role of "savior" economically to the EU's failures....or why Britain's opposing the EU and the tension in their country for that.

The world IS at war, but it's all about economics, land and resources...."Joining" one or another of their "clubs" as a nation pits you immediately against who they are opposing.

BTW are you aware that Henry Kissinger and Condoleeza Rice, are among key individuals in the US who are acting in tandem with the IMF, the Kiev government, in consultation with the White House, and the US Congress concernign Ukraine?