John-Thor Dahlburg

Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, suspected of the armed onslaught on a newspaper office that claimed a dozen lives, are the most wanted men in France.

Since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, armed men have shown up frequently and at odd hours to search the cinder-block houses, mosque and school in this settlement of Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic minority that has long suffered from discrimination in the peninsula that is its historic homeland.

One day in October, a dozen armed men in masks drove up to the gates of Yalta Film Studios. They weren’t actors, and this was no make-believe. It was a hostile takeover.