I had wondered where Russian democrat and lawyer Alexei Navalny was in all of this. Kseniya Sobchak supports Crimean annexation. Not Navalny. Today's Russia, the Russia of the later Putin, of Prokhanov, of Kholmogorov, of Dugin has no place for Alexei Navalny, literally; he's on house arrest. From the Australian:
"Perhaps the most eloquent sceptic [of Russian plans in Ukraine] is Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader and anti-corruption crusader. On his popular blog, Navalny tried to dispel the illusion that Russian tanks will be welcomed as liberators and argued that Russia’s national interest lay in fostering a Ukraine that was a flourishing democracy and pursuing a “European vector of development” in parallel with Russia itself. Five days later, he was sentenced to two months house arrest and banned from using the internet."
"Perhaps the most eloquent sceptic [of Russian plans in Ukraine] is Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader and anti-corruption crusader. On his popular blog, Navalny tried to dispel the illusion that Russian tanks will be welcomed as liberators and argued that Russia’s national interest lay in fostering a Ukraine that was a flourishing democracy and pursuing a “European vector of development” in parallel with Russia itself. Five days later, he was sentenced to two months house arrest and banned from using the internet."
