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While the world's attention was bracketed on the ongoing armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Associated Press set out to investigate what was also happening to the south, in Crimea, the territory unilaterally annexed by Russia from Ukraine in March. Mills, based in Moscow, and Dahlburg, then AP's Brussels news editor, and a former Moscow-based staffer for the AP and the Los Angeles Times, meticulously tracked down example after example of property taken over by Crimea's new leaders under a so-called nationalization law, against the rules of Russia's own constitution. The AP interviewed victims who lost millions in farms, factories or other assets, and whose efforts to get justice or compensation have been thwarted. The story was the first to extensively report the large-scale grab for real estate and other forms of property under way in Crimea, and to show that in some cases, the new pro-Moscow leadership installed in power had benefited personally.