To them, what happened in Kiev was a coup staged by anti-Russian fascists who they fear will punish the ethnic Russians who dominate this part of Ukraine. So, they said, they were making sure no weapons made it out of the armoury.
“We don't want to become another Yugoslavia here,” said Alexei Maslyukov, a local resident who organized the checkpoint, barely 15 metres from where masked Russians watched with automatic weapons.
In many ways, what happened in this town is unusual. Crimea was a crown jewel of the czarist and Soviet empires, and ethnic Russians moved here in droves over the years.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's independence, many Crimeans continued to see themselves as more Russian than Ukrainian.