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Comment by nabakin | Hacker News Reader

While this is a provocative response and there is no excuse for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2001 Ukrainian census[1] states 60.4% of the Crimean population considered themselves Russian and 24% of the Crimean population considered themselves Ukrainian.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea#Ethnici...

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Obviously it's impossible to do a reasonably unskewed poll in Crimea right now. However in other parts of Ukraine the number of people who consider themselves Russian drastically decreased when Russia started shelling their homes. So it's not clear how informative 2001 polls would be. Russia has also deliberately encouraged Russians to move to Crimea recently which would also skew that statistic.

You make some good points. I agree, any census done after Russia took Ukraine in 2014 can't be used and I don't doubt people who once considered themselves Russian started to consider themselves Ukrainian after Russia attacked Ukraine, but this was before all that so I don't think that's a problem.

And I'm not saying considering yourself Russian means you have allegiance to Russia, but I think there is a strong correlation between the two. Even if there's less of a correlation than I think, the percentage which considers themselves Russian is over twice that of the percentage which considers themselves Ukrainian. Maybe the Tatars align more with Ukraine than Russia, improving the balance, but idk.

Whether the people considered themselves to be "Russian" or not, in 1991 54% of voters in Crimea came out in favor of independence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_re...

Even though you have the results of "demographics" survey of 1989 that put "Russian" populace at 67%.

Thanks for this. I'm glad people have good, evidence-based responses to my comment.

This gives us a great idea of how likely a Crimean who considers themselves Russian would actually vote between the two and that while the correlation is strong, it might not be strong enough to suggest Crimeans would favor Russia and while Crimea is still clearly, the most Russian-friendly Ukrainian state, the decision between the two is much closer than I previously thought.

Edit: to add, I have talked with a Crimean who supports Ukraine, but they say the outcome of a vote would very likely be pro-Russia, even before they started shipping Russians in and pre-occupation.

What it probably shows, is that while the fraction of inhabitants of Russian ethnicity stayed roughly the same in there, the supporters for joining Russia, at the very least, are not the same exact set of people. And we don't really know their number because the vote didn't have any independent observers.

> but they say the outcome of a vote would very likely be pro-Russia, even before they started shipping Russians in and pre-occupation

I heard similar opinions too, but it might vary on who you ask. E.g. we talk about information bubbles on the Internet, but they exist IRL too. That is to say, hearsay is not proof. And even if it were true, one might keep in mind that the reasons for that might not be obvious. E.g. there had been a fair amount of anti-Ukrainian propaganda on the Russian state TV (which broadcasted in Crimea as well) starting with 2000s or so.

Or here's a thought exercise, from another perspective: would you say if US made a poll in Monterrey (Mexico) about whether the people in there wanted to join US, and >50% of them said yes, it would have been justifiable (in at least some practical sense) to annex it? Or Montreal/Canada, for example. It's close enough to the border.

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