According to the 2001 census, the proportion of people in eastern Ukraine whose first language is Russian ranges from 24.9% to 74.9% by region:
Comparing this with the referendum results, which range from 87.05% to 99.23% for joining Russia, it appears that a large number of “ethnic Ukrainians” must have voted in favor. A triumph for Putin’s charisma, perhaps?
Or...maybe in Crimea and the Donbass (Luhansk and Donetsk Oblast's), the people wanted out of the mess that was Ukraine?
1) 'The U.S and European Union may want to save Crimeans from themselves. But the Crimeans are happy right where they are.
One year after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea, poll after poll shows that the locals there -- be they Ukrainians, ethnic Russians or Tatars are mostly all in agreement: life with Russia is better than life with Ukraine.'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrap...locals-prefer-moscow-to-kiev/?sh=1a1bf7b7510d
'
As part of a broader polling project in the post-Soviet states, we asked the Levada-Center to return to Crimea in December 2019 to survey public attitudes there, five years after our initial survey. The 2019 survey consisted of face-to-face home interviews with 826 people, with a response rate of 54 percent. The survey used both direct questions as well as experimental ones that were designed to reach honest and reliable answers on sensitive topics. The proportions by nationality—the common term for ethnicity in post-Soviet countries—in the sample closely correspond to their ratios in the Crimean census of 2014. In our sample, 66 percent of respondents identified as Russian, 13 percent as Tatar—the ethnic Turkic group that makes up about one-eighth of the population of the peninsula—and 16 percent as Ukrainian.
Crimea was the fastest-growing region of Russia in 2019.
In general, Crimea’s annexation in 2014 gave residents grounds for optimism, with a majority of Crimeans hopeful that their lives would change for the better. After five years of development initiatives, more than $20 billion worth of investment from Moscow, and integration into Russia’s infrastructure, have expectations in Crimea changed?
From our survey data, it is possible to compare how Crimeans saw their future in December 2014 and how they perceived it five years later. Interviewees were asked if they expected to be better off after two years. Russians in Crimea harbored high hopes in 2014 (93 percent expected to be better off in two years), but they were somewhat less hopeful in 2019 (down to 71 percent). The proportion of Tatars who indicated that they thought being part of Russia would make them better off rose from 50 percent in 2014 to 81 percent in 2019. Ukrainians in Crimea remained generally optimistic: 75 percent indicated they expected to be better off in 2014, close to the 72 percent who did so in 2019. These generally high levels of optimism across ethnic groups suggest that most Crimeans are pleased to have left Ukraine for Russia, a richer country.
Despite the everyday logistical difficulties involved in breaking away from Ukraine, support for the exit remains undiminished. Approval of the outcome of the March 2014 referendum was still very high among Russians (84 percent) and Ukrainians (77 percent) in December 2019, both unchanged from 2014.
https://www.colorado.edu/geography/2020/04/04/john-oloughlin-russia-love
2) I would post polls from Luhansk and Donetsk?
But, since 2014 (yet before Russia's invasion), over 3,000 innocent civilians in these regions have been killed by Kiev shelling the crap out of/devastating much of their 'regions'?
I think it should be pretty obvious that they are not anxious to return to Ukraine...any time soon.
https://ukraine.un.org/sites/defaul...mber 2021 (rev 27 January 2022) corr EN_0.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas_(2014–2022)
3) the conclusion is obvious:
civilians living in Crimea and in LPR/DPR - OVERWHELMINGLY support no longer being apart of Ukraine.
(though what those people living in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblast's feel on this - is another matter entirely)
