Eighteen months ago Russian President Vladimir Putin's conquest of Crimea earned him the appellation among sycophants of Putin Tavrichesky or 'the Tauridian Putin', Taurus being an ancient Greek name for Crimea. Only one other Russian bears that honorific: Prince Potemkin, who conquered the peninsula in the name of Catherine the Great in 1783. The Crimean triumph reversed an erosion in Putin's popular standing, taking his support to levels so high (close to 90 percent) that they raise doubts about how they were measured or tell us something about what matters most to Putin's compatriots.
