NEW YORK TIMES: …Last week, in the midst of the Crimean crisis and on the heels of the Sochi Olympics, Mr. Putin’s approval rating had increased to 71.6 percent, the highest point since he returned to the presidency in 2012, according to a poll released by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion last week.
It is common for Russians — even liberal ones — to say that Crimea is Russian land to begin with, mistakenly transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. But some supporters who marched on Saturday saw Mr. Putin’s agenda as a far more sweeping one, which would see Russia reclaim lands it lost in the 20th century….
While the world’s attention is trained on Ukraine, the Russian authorities are cracking down on independent news outlets here, and scores of young journalists — a group that drove the protests — are facing unemployment. Several major cable and Internet providers have dropped the liberal-leaning news broadcaster Dozhd, a flagship project that began when Dmitri A. Medvedev was president, and its general director has announced that it will close within two months… (more)
