On a typically snowy January day in the port city of Sevastopol, on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, a handful of residents are marching through the centre of town, their large Russian flags held high. The demonstrators are a mixed bunch: they vary in age between mid-twenties and early seventies, and they represent no one organisation or political group. As they walk, they salute a series of Soviet-era monuments, acknowledging the frequent cheers and honking car horns of passers-by. “We want to improve the mood of the city,” says Tamara Simonovic, one of the marchers. “We want to prove that everyone who lives here is Russian.”
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