Since last March, this force has conducted a series of raids and property seizures. Immediately after annexation, Russia swiftly assumed control of several Ukrainian state-owned industrial interests; it soon shifted its focus to private enterprises. In August, the headquarters of Zaliv, Crimea’s largest civilian shipbuilder, were stormed, as part of a campaign to force the management to hand over control to a Moscow-based company. According to estimates from local sources, the total value of losses accrued as a result of real estate and other asset expropriation in Crimea is more than $1 billion.

As part of this, Crimea’s authorities forced Ukrainian banks operating on the peninsula to close, including those belonging to Igor V. Kolomoisky, the pro-Kiev governor of Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine. In their place, Russian ones have moved in — among them, the Russian National Commercial Bank. According to The Moscow Times, Crimean authorities acquired this little-known subsidiary of the Bank of Moscow “just weeks after Russia seized the peninsula. They then presided over its growth from one of the country’s smallest banks to become Crimea’s largest bank.”

The Kremlin has seized control of the peninsula’s media, taking Ukrainian TV channels off the air and replacing them with state-backed Russian ones. In August, Crimea’s authorities raided the independent Chernomorska broadcaster, impounding its equipment and computers, and sealing off its building. Elsewhere, journalists have been pressured to toe the Kremlin’s line. According to Kyiv Post, an English-language newspaper, the Ukraine-based Center for Investigative Journalism recorded 85 incidents of harassment and censorship against reporters in Crimea during March 2014 alone.

Human Rights Watch has reported that the peninsula’s pro-Russian paramilitary groups are implicated in the disappearance of a number of pro-Ukrainian activists. In March, Andriy Shekun and Anatoly Kovalksy were abducted from a train station in Simferopol, Crimea’s capital, and held for 11 days in detention where they were beaten and shot at with low-velocity handguns (designed to cause trauma but not kill). Mr. Shekun was subjected to electric shocks on two occasions, according to the rights group.

The people who have borne the worst of Russia’s annexation are Crimea’s native Tatars. Since March, several Tatar activists have been abducted, some of them killed — including Reshat Ametov, who was detained during a Simferopol protest in March, and was later found murdered. Two of the community’s most prominent leaders, Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov, have been barred by Crimea’s authorities from entering the peninsula. In September, Russian security forces raided the headquarters of the Mejlis, the Tatars’ representative body, as well as the home of one of its members, Eskender Bariev.