Mark Moore tips me off to this fascinating account of Ukranian secret police (S.B.U.) commander Col. Gen. Ihor P. Smeshko’s heroic efforts to protect Ukranian protesters from anti-insurgent military forces during this past fall’s presidential election controversy:

[…] It was just after 10 p.m. on Nov. 28.

More than 10,000 troops scrambled toward trucks. Most had helmets, shields and clubs. Three thousand carried guns. Many wore black masks. Within 45 minutes, according to their commander, Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov, they had distributed ammunition and tear gas and were rushing out the gates.

Kiev was tilting toward a terrible clash, a Soviet-style crackdown that could have brought civil war. And then, inside Ukraine’s clandestine security apparatus, strange events began to unfold.

While wet snow fell on the rally in Independence Square, an undercover colonel from the Security Service of Ukraine, or S.B.U., moved among the protesters’ tents. He represented the successor agency to the K.G.B., but his mission, he said, was not against the protesters. It was to thwart the mobilizing troops. He warned opposition leaders that a crackdown was afoot.

Like an XBox Game come to life.  Well worth a read, in my opinion.

Conversely, reached for comment, failed presidential candidate-cum-cuddly MSNBC talk show host Pat Buchanan was quick to dismiss the story as “a fanciful bit of revisionist history intended to romanticize what in essence was a US-led coup to foil Putin’s attempt to rebuild the Soviet empire under a federalist mandate. 

“Check closely and I’m sure you’ll find the story was written by a Jew.  Or a Mexican.  Am I right?”