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On 18 March 2014, Russia announced that the Ukrainian province of Crimea would join the Russian Federation after the "yes" vote in the referendum.
White blue red flags on all the buildings, RUS license plates, T-shirts with the effigy of Putin, Crimea seems today to live 100% at Moscow time.
Port of the famous Russian fleet in the Black Sea in a region where more than 70% of the population is Russian and where anti-Ukrainian propaganda is in full swing, Crimea quickly sank into the Moscow mold after Putin's 92% win in the last presidential elections.
But the tone has changed in the peninsula, surveillance is omnipresent and any discordant voice is strongly repressed. Those who criticize Moscow's authority are subject to increased surveillance by security services and the FSB exercises strict control over publications on social networks
Western tourists have completely disappeared since the "attachment", as we say here, and the few foreigners are welcomed with suspicion.
The idyllic beaches of Yalta, where improbable Soviet sanatoriums dominate, are now under attack by noisy and often alcoholic Muscovite tourists taking advantage of the cheap All inclusive.
With the return of Russia, it is also all Soviet nostalgia that reappears in the peninsula. The commemorations of the victory against the German army during the Second World War, little followed in Ukraine are today the subject of intense festivities, the great battles of the Red Army are reconstructed and the cadets of the various military schools proudly parade under Lenin's eye extending his arm towards the Black Sea.
Sixty-two years after the Crimea's donation to Ukraine, Russia seems to have definitively returned to the peninsula and Moscow is, as usual, shaping a political and social space free of all irregularities.