First appearing at Simferopol airport in the early hours of Friday morning 28 February 2014, by Saturday evening the silent, unidentified men were guarding key government buildings in the city centre, had blockaded Ukrainian border troops at Balaklava bay and Belbek airport near Sebastopol, and established checkpoints on roads across the peninsula.
It was the first time any of the mysterious camouflaged men who have appeared around the Crimean capital have identified themselves.

They have been so well behaved that people started to call them − “Vezhliviye Lyudi” − “Polite People.”