Maxim Kats: “But Crimea is ours”

“For the last year on Twitter, I’ve always been giving links to his posts with the caption “but Crimea is ours,” a storm immediately rises in the mensions from people who for some reason call themselves patriots. Like, what does Crimea have to do with it, they say, it’s not Putin who litters in the city, but the residents, and that this is completely unrelated.

How connected. Taking cities from terrible to great is very easy and relatively inexpensive. And it’s generally easy to turn them from terrible to normal; often simple organizational measures are enough, even without major construction. The problem is that no one needs it.

People in power have long believed that in order to continue to be in power, they need to feed the FSB and other security forces well and control television."