In the past, Putin cared quite a bit about what Western leaders thought of him, but he has since become more indifferent. "The Crimea decision was a chance to show that Russia can take decisive action internationally, and to teach America a lesson that it has its own interests that it is willing to defend," Makarkin said. "There were two aims: maintaining Russia's sphere of interest and self-assertion."

Because of the Crimea dispute, Russia's membership in the G8 was suspended, and Europe and the United States imposed travel bans and asset freezes on a number of Russian politicians. The sanctions were not taken particularly seriously by Russian politicians.

Presidential aide Vladislav Surkov, a formerly powerful ideologue under Putin, laughed off the sanctions imposed on him.

"I see the decision of the Washington administration as a recognition of my accomplishments for Russia. It's an honor for me," Surkov told the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily newspaper. "I don't have foreign accounts. In the United States I'm interested (in rapper) Tupac Shakur, (poet) Allen Ginsberg and (painter) Jackson Pollock. I don't need a visa to access their work, so I'm not losing anything."

Putin, according to Makarkin, is reflecting the will of a large part of the government elite.

"Someone is afraid of sanctions. But others see Russia's greatness as standing above everything else," Makarkin said. "Putin was supported by elites in the (law enforcement and security structures), while everyone else just went along with him."

The world is already split up. The world just doesn't know it yet...

A group of heavily-armed suspected Russian soldiers in ski masks on Tuesday stormed the Bogdan Avto-Salon, a Hyundai and Subaru dealership in a quiet suburb of the city, taking control of its offices and salesrooms. The men, who later stood guard along the salon’s perimeter fence, refused to identify themselves to reporters and waved them away with guns.

“It’s clear there’s going to be a new carve-up of property here now that the Russians are here,” said Arzy Selimova, an editor at state TV station Krym. Local businessmen have noted that the dealership targeted in Tuesday’s raid was owned by a partner of Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian oligarch, who backs the new government in Kiev.

... and open chip shops in North London.

The world is already split up. The world just doesn't know it yet...

After Ametov took part in a meeting to support the EuroMaidan Revolution on March 3, a local TV crew filmed him standing in silent protest before uniformed Russian-backed armed men and Crimean self-defense forces surrounding the Cabinet of Ministers building in Simferopol.


“He was just standing there and they took him away,” Ametov’s mother, Refika Ametova, told the Kyiv Post. “He stood there for about an hour and a quarter, and I suppose they were waiting for him to leave. But he didn’t, and in the end they took his arms and took him away.”

Local witnesses tell The Interpreter that the victim's body was "found naked, his face wrapped with duct tape, and his hands bound by handcuffs not manufactured in Ukraine," raising ominous signs that the man was tortured before suffering a violent death at the hands of his unknown captors.

Some 300 members of Crimea's Sunni Muslim Tatar community gathered at a cemetery outside the capital to pay their respects the father-of-three.
"This is the first time in 20 years that this has happened," one mourner said. "I don't think this will be the end.