In opposing annexation, Mr. Kazarin has been in the minority. The standard refrain among the majority, who voted in the hasty March 2014 referendum to join Russia, is that despite the chaos, Crimea avoided a war like that in southeastern Ukraine that has claimed more than 6,400 lives.

“We feel safe now,” said Yuri Skorik, a history teacher here in Gurzuf who led protests against the seizure of a public beach. “I would say that, on balance, security is worth all these problems.”

During the prime minister’s televised town hall meeting, Mr. Aksyonov blamed most of the problems on either the sanctions or the lack of competent government officials.

In recent weeks, however, the Federal Security Service or F.S.B., the successor agency to the K.G.B., arrested the minister of industrial policy and two senior officials on various corruption charges. Three ministers were also dismissed, and one of them is under criminal investigation.

In response, Mr. Aksyonov announced that he was forming a Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Officials. No sooner had he announced it than he backtracked, saying it contradicted federal law.

Analysts in the Russian news media have suggested the root problem is the fight to control the river of Russian government money flowing into Crimea, with about 700 billion rubles, currently valued at about $10 billion, pledged by 2020. For example, Kremlin auditors announced in June that two-thirds of the funds that Moscow had allocated for road construction in 2014 could not be accounted for.