[LINK] "Crimea Ignores Economic Pain to Embrace Putin in New Russia Era"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg's Anna Andrianova looks at what is going on in Crimea. Notwithstanding a serious economic crash and previous support for remaining in Ukraine, it looks as if the war in the Donbas might well have created a pro-Russian constituency.

In the Crimean resort town of Alushta, realtor Janna Voitenko is doing all she can to welcome the region’s new overseers. A Russian flag hangs outside her office and a portrait of President Vladimir Putin is in the entry.

It hasn’t offset an economy that’s dead in the water. She spends her days waiting for customers to come in.

With revenue at her real estate agency down 90 percent, Voitenko is turning to family and friends to help pay the office rent. Even if anyone did want to buy a flat, she’d have a hard time finding a listing for them: the property database was only just reopened after being closed since March, when Ukraine cut access to the records after Russia annexed Crimea.

“Everything -- cars, apartments, bank accounts -- you name it, we had to start from scratch,” Voitenko said as she flipped through a list of names of people she hoped to talk into selling their homes. “We are just tired, tired to the degree that there is no energy left.”

The Crimeans who voted to join Russia in a disputed March referendum got what they asked for -- and they are paying a high price. The Black Sea peninsula is in a legal and technological twilight zone, in which Russia’s 2.4 million newest citizens find themselves without legal titles to their properties or access to their savings. Prices are soaring, business is down and business owners deemed friendly to Ukraine are finding their assets nationalized.

Still, based on interviews on the peninsula, Crimeans say they’d rather be here and under Putin’s thumb than in eastern Ukraine, where more than 4,600 have been killed since May and countless more forced to flee their homes. Many in Crimea say it is Putin who saved them from the tumult around Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.