The Daily Beast
By Julia Davis
It has been a difficult week for the Kremlin.
For one, a devastating attack on a Russian air base in occupied Crimea had government officials and state media outlets scrambling to convince citizens that Ukrainian forces weren’t responsible for the explosions that rocked the Saki air base, as an exodus of frightened tourists clogged the Crimean bridge and other roadways that connect the occupied peninsula to the Russian mainland.
To make matters worse, the EU has been urged to introduce a travel ban on Russian tourists. The only bright side to that announcement was that at least 69 percent of Russians don’t travel abroad. “The majority of Russians won’t even notice it,” said economic observer Tatiana Remezova during Tuesday night’s broadcast of the news hour Vesti.