SIMFEROPOL, Crimea — Amid a sea of Russian flags, Vladimir Putin strode onto the stage and shouted: “We are together!” before leading the thousands-strong crowd in a chant of “Russia! Russia!”

Putin visited Simferopol, the largest city in Crimea, on Monday for the fifth anniversary of the Kremlin’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula, a largely unexpected move by Moscow that saw relations between Russia and Western countries plummet to their lowest level since the end of the Cold War.

His brief appearance at a concert, which featured rock bands and a pro-Kremlin rapper, was the culmination of four days of celebrations in Crimea that included the participation of the Night Wolves, a notorious pro-government motorbike gang, as well as a demonstration of Russian military equipment in Sevastopol, the peninsula’s second biggest city.

The center of Simferopol was locked down from early on ahead of Putin’s arrival, as security service snipers took up positions on rooftops overlooking the main square, which is dominated by a statue of Vladimir Lenin, where the concert took place.

Locals said they are happy to be part of Russia.

The Kremlin says it has pumped at least €13.5 billion into Crimea since the annexation.

“Things are getting better. Crimea is developing fast,” said Oleg Babanin, an electrician. “I have no regrets about joining Russia, even if living standards haven’t gone up significantly,” said Tatiana Bodrova, a housewife. Both said they voted in the controversial 2014 referendum that resulted in the Kremlin annexing Crimea, a Russian-speaking peninsula that was gifted to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.

Away from the main celebration in Simferopol, families posed for photographs next to a life-size statue of one of the “little green men” — Russian troops without insignia — who spearheaded the Kremlin’s takeover. The bronze statue, which depicts a small girl handing flowers to a soldier in full combat gear, is accompanied by a plaque which reads: “From the grateful residents of Crimea.”

The Kremlin says it has pumped at least €13.5 billion into Crimea since the annexation — more than in almost any other region that it controls. Analysts say the investment is aimed at ensuring that Crimeans remain happy about Russian rule. The Kremlin has also constructed a 19 kilometer-long bridge and 250 kilometer-long highway to link Crimea to the Russian mainland at a cost of around €6 billion.

Earlier Monday, Putin officially launched two power stations, one in Simferopol and another in Sevastopol. Putin portrayed the development as a vital step to securing Crimea’s energy security, saying that the power stations would produce enough energy for 90 percent of its electricity demands.

Discontent

Not everyone in Crimea is happy. Critics accuse the Kremlin of deploying massive numbers of security service agents in a bid to stamp out dissent. Opponents of Russian rule, including ethnic Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, and ethnic Russians who remain loyal to Kiev, describe an atmosphere of fear.

“When we were part of Ukraine, no one demanded that I demonstrated that I was a patriot,” said Sergei, a former Red Army officer who asked that his identity be protected because of possible reprisals. “But in today’s Crimea, you have to shout about how big a patriot you are every single day. They have turned Crimea into a mini Soviet Union,” he said in hushed tones. “There are informers everywhere.”

It’s the Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic group that makes up around 12 percent of the peninsula’s total population of 2.3 million, who have perhaps suffered the most. Deported en masse to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin in 1944, they were only allowed back to their homeland in the late 1980s, as the communist system began to crumble. The memory of their mistreatment at the hands of Moscow means that many Crimean Tatars are among the most outspoken opponents of Russian rule.

Over a dozen Crimean Tatars have been forcibly disappeared since 2014, according to Human Rights Watch. Six of them were later found dead. The most high-profile case involved 39-year-old Reshat Ametov, who was bundled into a car in March 2014 by suspected members of a pro-Russian paramilitary group. Almost two weeks later, his handcuffed body was found in a forest. Ametov’s abduction, which took place in broad daylight, was filmed by a bystander and uploaded to YouTube. Yet no one has been brought to justice for his murder.

Late last year, Russian security service officers arrested Edem Bekirov, a Crimean Tatar who suffers from multiple health problems, including diabetes and a heart condition, on explosives and weapons smuggling charges. Bekirov’s supporters say the charges are absurd, pointing out that the 58-year-old agronomist wears a prosthetic leg and gets around on crutches.

“This was done to terrify people,” said Zair Smedlya, a prominent Crimean Tatar activist, during an interview in Krasnogvardeiskoe, a small town near Simferopol. “The Russian security forces wanted to demonstrate that no one can expect mercy. These are Gestapo-type tactics.”

Smedlya also said the Crimean Tatars are committed to peaceful resistance against Russian rule. “We know that if we take up arms, this will give the Kremlin an excuse to launch a full-scale military operation against us.”

Despite Russia’s mounting economic woes, Putin insists that the issue of Crimea is non-negotiable.

It wasn’t only in Crimea that Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territory triggered deep divisions. The annexation, described by pro-Kremlin politicians as the righting of a historical injustice, sparked a wave of patriotic euphoria in Russia that saw Putin’s approval ratings soar. Within weeks of the “little green men” appearing in Crimea, Russia deployed troops to eastern Ukraine to boost a separatist movement. Amid this frenzied atmosphere, Putin lashed out at Kremlin critics, calling them “national traitors,” while state media branded opposition figures as a “fifth column” in the pay of Western intelligence services.

“There was a major division in society because of Crimea,” said Ilya Ponomaryov, the only Russian lawmaker to vote against the annexation in 2014. Ponomaryov said the political atmosphere was summed up by the reaction of Alexei Mitrofanov, a fellow lawmaker.

“Mitrofanov tried to grab my hand as I reached for the [voting] button in parliament,” said Ponomaryov, who now lives in Ukraine. “He was shouting ‘don’t do it — we will be punished! They will say that we saw that you were going to vote against it, but we didn’t prevent you!’”

Mitrofanov, who fled Russia in 2014 after being charged with fraud, could not be reached for comment.

Calm in Moscow

Although there was no shortage of flag-waving in Crimea, in Moscow authorities for the first time broke with the tradition of staging mass political rallies to mark the anniversary of the annexation. Officials said the move was linked to the widespread view that Russia has successfully cemented its hold over the peninsula.

“The mood has changed,” said Valery Fadeev, a member of Russia's Public Chamber, which advises the government. “Crimea has become a part of everyday life and has stopped being political.”

Yet analysts suggest that a rising resentment of the economic costs of the annexation of Crimea, as well as of Russia’s military campaign in Syria, is more likely to be behind the Kremlin’s reluctance to hold a triumphant rally near Red Square this year.

“During the last year, sociologists began to hear in focus groups that Crimea has cost us too much, and that we generally spend too much on foreign military adventures,” said Yekaterina Schulmann, a Moscow-based political scientist. These concerns, Schulmann said, were reflected in Putin’s recent state-of-the-nation address, which focused almost entirely on domestic issues. “Although the speech promised quite lavish social spending, it had almost no effect on polls whatsoever — it could be that people have got into the habit of thinking that the higher powers don’t care about the things that people care about.”

According to an opinion poll published last week by the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation, only 39 percent of Russians now view positively the takeover of Crimea — down 28 percentage points since 2014. Among 18-30 year olds, just 24 percent say the seizure of Crimea was good for Russia. The poll came amid a steady decline in Putin’s trust ratings, which have fallen to a 13-year low of just 33 percent, amid widespread discontent over a controversial law to increase the pension age by five years.

His [Putin's] successor would risk being seen as a “traitor” if he or she moved to return the peninsula to Ukraine.

Although initial Western sanctions against Russia over its actions in Crimea were weak, they have grown in severity, with additional measures being tacked on over a range of issues from the Kremlin’s military actions in eastern Ukraine to alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Analysts at Bloomberg Economics estimate that sanctions caused the Russian economy to decline by up to 6 percent since the annexation. (Another 4 percent, they said, has been knocked off by the slump in global oil prices, Russia’s main export.)

Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said in a statement that the bloc would continue to condemn Russia’s “violation of international law” in Crimea. She also condemned Russia’s “systematic human rights violations” against Crimean Tatars. Last week, the U.S., Canada and the EU imposed fresh sanctions on more than a dozen Russian officials and businesses over the Kremlin’s “aggression” in Ukraine.

Yet despite Russia’s mounting economic woes, Putin insists that the issue of Crimea is non-negotiable. And analysts say that even after Putin’s rule ends, his successor would risk being seen as a “traitor” if he or she moved to return the peninsula to Ukraine.

“There are no expectations in Russia that the West will remove the Crimea issue from the agenda in the foreseeable future,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the head of Russia's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. “There is not even a framework for a conversation about this.”

Marc Bennetts is a Moscow-based journalist and author of “I’m Going to Ruin Their Lives: Inside Putin’s War on Russia’s Opposition” (Oneworld, 2016).