Many of Crimea’s ethnic Russians welcomed the region’s annexation by Russia in 2014, but five years later, a poor economy and a crackdown on political dissent have left some Crimeans dissatisfied. Writing in a Pulitzer Center-supported story for The Atlantic, Hannah Lucinda Smith interviewed Sergey Akimov, a Cossack activist who once supported the annexation, but now is one of its staunchest opponents. Putin “plays hockey while the forests are burning,” Akimov told Smith, “But people believe it. They can’t imagine what they would do without him.”
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