RUSSIA was absent from last weekend’s summit of the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies, having been disinvited after its seizure of Crimea in March 2014. So it was no surprise that the G7 leaders’ joint declaration on Monday devoted a sentence to condemning that “illegal annexation”. But when it came to the conditions for easing the sanctions they have imposed on Russia, the G7's declaration spoke only of implementing the Minsk cease-fire agreement in Ukraine. Nor was Crimea mentioned by John Kerry, the American secretary of state, after his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Sochi last month. The issue seemed to have slipped to the bottom of the agenda.

In Crimea, too, people are beginning to feel that they have slipped to the bottom of everyone’s agenda. The jubilation of pro-Russian residents during the referendum campaign for annexation in March 2014 is hard to recall. Western sanctions, obstructed trade with Ukraine, disappointing financial support from Moscow, and the indignities of a botched integration process (such as the Russian passports residents have received, which European governments refuse to honour because they are stamped "Crimea") have all taken a toll. Today the mood is best expressed by the triumphal but grim slogan seen on a billboard here: “What next? Even if stones fall from the sky...we're in the Homeland!”

Former supporters of the annexation now sound sombre. The red tape and corruption have grown unbearable, complains Natasha Fiodorovna (not her real name), who backed reintegration with Russia. Then she brightens: “Not to worry. Sasha has not emigrated forever, he will come back.” Like many educated young Crimeans, her son, an IT specialist, found the combination of sanctions and internet censorship had made his work impossible. He left for Montenegro.

Russian timeline: The road to 2015 Much of the disappointment is rooted in the economy. The average salary in Crimea is roughly two-thirds that in Russia. The Russian government initially made good on promises to hike doctors’ and teachers’ salaries after the annexation, but those raises were cut back in April. Since January prices for food have risen over 19%, almost twice as steeply as in Russia. Sanctions have sharply curtailed business investment, and Kiev periodically threatens to cut off the peninsula’s electricity. Among those who opposed the annexation, some want Ukraine to impose a total blockade. “Let Putin try to deliver it all,” says a retired businessman from the Tatar ethnic minority, most of whom boycotted the referendum. The peninsula’s main industry, tourism, is looking at its second meagre summer in a row. The ferry service from Russia’s mainland brings nothing like enough tourists to make up for the absent Ukrainians and the Europeans whose cruise ships once docked in Yalta. Western credit cards do not work. Many businesses have been expropriated by “self-defence” units, paramilitaries controlled by the peninsula’s Russian-installed prime minister, Sergei Aksyonov. Meanwhile, authorities are eliminating the political and cultural space for Crimea’s Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians. In March a group of Ukrainians who laid flowers at a statue of Taras Shevchenko, their national poet, were fined some $200 each for “employing Ukrainian attributes”. Last month, authorities detained seven Ukrainians for taking selfies while wearing vyshyvanki, their traditional embroidered shirts. Police also detained a dozen Tatars who gathered in Simferopol’s Lenin Square on May 18th to commemorate Deportation Day, the anniversary of the date in 1944 when Stalin deported all 180,000 Crimean Tatars to central Asia.