The Russian publication Lenta.ru published a manipulative news story claiming that Ukraine has issued a new coin in which the Crimean peninsula is pictured as leaving Ukraine on train wheels. Lenta.ru implies that the imagery on the coin is indicative of the Crimean peninsula no longer being a part of Ukraine. Other Russian sites accused Ukraine of being masochistic and issuing a coin to commemorate territory that Kyiv has lost.
The coin that russian journalists have been mocking does exist. The Ukrainian National Bank issued the coin to commemorate the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their homeland during Stalin’s rule.
The 5 hryvnia coin features a map of the Crimean peninsula. Below the peninsula are train wheels atop train tracks symbolizing the trains that carried thousands of Crimean Tatars to exile in Central Asia.
RIA Novosti, Moskovsky Komsomolets and scores of other Russian sites gleefully published similarly mocking stories on this theme.
