Thread: What's it like in Gagra today?

Alex80, yes, that is what any Western European would discover, who tried to investigate on his own.

(Deleted. L.)

For anyone else:
If Crimeans were unhappy about the situation, every single Western media outlet would be there interviewing the people with complaints!
It would be on the news and in the papers.

The problem is, they can't find anyone credible with legitimate complaints about Russia. And really, that's not surprising, given that everyone has doubled or tripled their income since the area became Russian. Also given that it's clear that the area is going to be revitalised and receive huge investments from Moscow. Who in their right mind would be unhappy with such a situation - most of them are ethnic Russians anyway! This is such a no-brainer.

I saw some news coverage shortly after the referendum and the reporter from a Western media outlet actually said"We've been trying to find somebody who is not happy with the result, but so far, we haven't been able to find anyone".

So from the Western perspective, there is no story worth telling, on the ground. No people who are really unhappy about the situation, hence they do not do on-the-ground reports from Crimea!

If Russia messed up and upset people on Crimea, so they turned against Moscow for some reason; Then Western media would immediately seize on it and start reporting about miserable, oppressed and tearful people. But it seems like Crimea is the darling of all of Russia at the moment. They are not likely to complain, given what the alternative is.

Same as Russian media regularly reports about people in Kiev who are unhappy about the current regime, and there seems to be plenty.
If you are against something, you only report about it if you can find people who criticize it. Propaganda 101.

Western media is instead writing pieces about how Russia obtained Crimea illegally, a position that at least has some amount of factual basis. It can legitimately be said that the annexation was not quite per UN principles (whatever they may be...)

Additionally: When writing about it, they are trying to make it look like Crimea was some completely random piece of foreign territory that Russia just wanted.... The implied suggestion is: If they could invade Crimea, they could invade anywhere! Tallinn or Helsinki could be next! Anyone could be next!

This argument is used in Sweden Finland at the moment, to try to steer public opinion towards supporting NATO membership.

A lot of younger people, uneducated people etc just take it at face value and are now genuinely scared of Russia.