Orysia Lutsevych: The long arm of Russian ‘soft’ power
Russian soldiers unload trainload of their modified T-72 tanks after their arrival in Gvardeyskoe railway station near the Crimean capital Simferopol, on March 31, 2014.
Anxious about losing ground to Western influence in the post-Soviet space and the ousting of pro-Russia elites by popular electoral uprisings in the early 2000s, the Kremlin has developed a range of proxy groups in support of its foreign policy