I never said Russia didn’t operate the checkpoints. But prior to 2014, Crimea was indisputably Ukrainian territory, and Russia operated security checkpoints inside Ukraine at Ukraine’s discretion.
No one is claiming that the annexation of Crimea involved violence at the scale of the current war, but it was not non-violent, either. Characterizing it as just “signing of papers” is false.
It’s extremely painful discussing these topics with people online whose only understanding of these regions comes through the lens of this war.
What other lens should we look at the annexation through? It was clearly the early stages of this war.