ABSTRACT
The crisis in Ukraine has had a significant impact on Russia’s domestic landscape, more so than the 2011–2012 anti-Putin protests when minority “liberals” and “nationalists” came together to denounce the regime. While the annexation of Crimea boosted Putin’s popularity at home, the Donbas insurgency shattered the domestic ideological status quo: the Kremlin’s position appeared somehow hesitant, fostering the resentment of nationalist circles that were hoping for a second annexation or conquest of eastern Ukraine. At the same time, the large consensus gained by the regime around its management of the Ukrainian crisis helped consolidate popular geopolitics, 2 where Russia is depicted as a country under siege, having to fight for its great-power status to be recognized against a large coalition of enemies, and whose territorial expansion – real with Crimea, symbolic with Donbas – has been sacralized. 3
