New Yorker honcho David Remnick wrote a post this morning about that described the commander of the Ukrainian separatist group that intially took credit for shooting down the Malaysian Air jetliner thusly:

A wildly messianic nationalist who cultivates an air of lumpy intrigue, [Igor] Strelkov has found his way to the battlefields of Chechnya, Serbia, and Transnistria. He is now helping to run the separatist operation in Donetsk. Like the radical nationalists and neo-imperialists in Moscow, who have easy access to the airwaves these days, Strelkov has a singular point of disagreement with Putin: the Russian President hasn’t gone nearly far enough; he has failed to invade and annex “Novorossiya,” the separatist term for eastern Ukraine. Pavlovsky said that people like Strelkov and his Moscow allies are as delusional as they are dangerous, somehow believing that they are taking part in grand historical dramas, like the Battle of Borodino, in 1812, or “the novels of Tolkien.”

“Strelkov is well known for leading historical reënactments of Russian military battles, like you have in the States with the Civil War reënactors,” Pavlovsky said. “It used to be a fantasy world for people like him, but now they have a realm for their imaginations.”

Just imagine the leader of your local tea party group armed with rockets and absolutely no sense whatsoever. These are the people the Russian government has unleashed on the world: morons with modern weapons. Visualize the open carry malakas or Cliven Bundy militia types armed with missiles. This is some scary shit, y'all.