I learned how to follow topics with the use of hashtags. In this case #Crimea will bring up every tweet involving the crisis between Russia and Ukraine and there are thousands. The vast majority of tweets are from people who have no idea what is going on and just retweet retweets ad nauseum until there is no way of telling what is happening. They spent more time including hashtags in their tweets than they did thinking about their messages.
Then there are the snarky comments about the U.S. official response. One turkey did not know why the U.S. didn’t deploy naval assets to the Baltic. I don’t think the tweeter even has a basic understanding of geography. Now the whole tweetie-verse knows it.
To be sure, someone on the ground could be tweeting valuable information, but how can one tell. For anything definitive I will have to go to BBC or CNN or Reuters.