Hello, Thanks! Will try to answer to all of your questions. It's not too much, when I was writing "ask me about Russia", I already knew that there would be questions about Ukraine, Crimea and Donbass. 1. Is the economy really terrible now in Russia or is the western media exaggerating the situation?? If you ask me about myself – I don't feel much worse than last year. Of course, prices raised (I think it's 40-50%), and many business companies, especially related with tourism, or importing goods from abroad are really in trouble now. When first sanctions were launched and oil prices went down, many experts said that Putin regime will fall fastly, because economics will be just ruined. But now it's obvoius that it won't. By the way, if you want to read russian not-propaganda newspaper – i suggest you to go to meduza.io/en, I think it's most professionally made media (and they translate all the texts to english). 2. What is Putin doing to fight back the sanctions? Most of your information is right – Russia launched their own sanctions and banned import of some products from EU, US, Canada, Australia. Politics said that sanctions are not bad for Russia, because we can establish our production (now it's clear that these words for just trick for fools). Another thing - Putin is searching for the partners in Asia (China, India), South America (Brazil), Africa (Egypt) but it's not a new. A few years ago Russia organised and entered Eurasian Custom Union, for example. There are two main opposite ideas now in Russia - that country most be a part of Europe (which I agree), people on the opposite side think that Russia must search partners in Asia. It's becoming more and more clear that Putin is for the second option. 3. What does Crimea have that makes it significant to Putin? First of all, historically Сrimea is very important territory for Russia (not economically, just mentally). In 1954 it was transferred to Ukrainian SSR (Ukraine). And now Putin intervented it and took back. Most of the people don't care how it was made (I mean, anonymous russian soldiers coming to the territory of foreign country and so on), they only feel very proud that Putin took Crimea back without single gunshot (about 84% of russians support Putin, year ago it was 49%). Another thing which you mentioned, and Putin said about it 2-3 times - he don't want to NATO get close to russian borders (maybe that's why he wanted to take Eastern Ukraine too, but then realised that it would be much harder?). In my opinion, it's not a point, in 21st century we've atom bombs which can be automatically directed from USA to Russia or another way, is it really important to not led NATO get close to Russia? Very much doubt it, but i'm not an expert in geopolitics. Crimea is not territory with oil, it always was a touristic place, but now it's in terrible condition. 4. Does Putin have a hand in what the rebels are doing??? In May 2014 I met my college and friend, who was in Maidan, Eastern Ukraine and Crimea (we're both journalists) and asked him the same thing. He answered that Putin totally controlled it at the beginning, when there were more professionals (there are Russian soldiers, obviously). But now there are a lot of volunteers, who really believe that they have to go to Donbass and fight for Russians against the fascists (new Ukraine gov), because our propagandist media say them about it 24 hours a day. And question is does Putin control them now? If he today evening will say them to stop and go back to Russia - will they? I think they feel like heros now, because they're "fighting for russians", why they have to stop just because Putin said them to do so? Very hard question. And I really don't know why Putin decided to make war in Eastern Ukraine. Maybe he thought that it can be intervented just like Crimea, maybe he wants to destablize Ukraine for political reasons, there are so many theories about it, but it can't be confirmed. Putin thinks that he's a most powerful president in the world, and you really can't say ecsactly what he has in his mind. I hope it was useful, if you have some more questions - I'm glad to help you with it.
