Overall Crime and Safety Situation
Following a successful staging of the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February 2014, Russia’s political, economic, and social climates changed markedly as a result of the country’s illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, ongoing support for military separatists in eastern Ukraine, U.S./Western economic sanctions, and a dramatic drop in the price of oil that significantly weakened the value of the Russian ruble. These aggregate events have greatly strained the U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship; however, while anti-American and anti-Western sentiment increased in the latter half of 2014 (most notably in certain Russian media outlets), there were no incidents of wide-scale violence specifically targeting American citizens.