Crimea was given to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev when it did not matter, because it was all part of the same country.
Russia conquered Crimea under Catherine the Great. I don’t know a single Russian (no matter where on the political spectrum) who doesn’t think Crimea belongs historically to Russia, and I am pretty sure a majority of the people in Crimea rather want to be part of Russia than the Ukraine.
It is denying reality to think this can be undone without inordinate amount of bloodshed.
That’s what I hear from family relatives and old neighbors as well, but I think most Crimean’s would want to be part of Ukraine, not Russia, as western Ukraine wants badly to be part of the E.U. And this freaks Putin out, to be further isolated if Ukraine were eventually be a NATO member, with missiles right on the Russian border. But even more importantly, shutting Russia out from the vast oil reserves in Ukraine and Poland.
It “sounds” reasonable but it isn’t. Crimea was annexed by Russia, so to agree to letting them lease Crimea would be condoning their aggression.
The majority of the population (66% or so) is Russian, the Crimean Tatars is 10% ( but mind you, it has tree different official languages and some other large minority groups), If you made an objective poll on Crimea, it would be Russian.
Errol Morris visited the Crimea to investigate an old picture from the Crimean War for his book 'Believing is seing" for its veracity (it was posed) (published 2011) and mentions his local Russian guide’s anger with Boris Jeltisin for passing Crimea to Ukraine with a penstroke.
[EDIT , after I saw your last post. ]
but I think
On what basis, ?
I doubt you can percieve Europeans idea of nationality ( I’m Danish and a large part of Denmark “Sønderjylland” was part of The German Empire 1864-1920, which meant that Danish speaking, Danish feeling men were conscripted into the German army during WW I, with 5000 killed. Many families lost a son , forced to fight for a suppressing occupier).
After the end of the war, as part of the Versaille treaty, referendums were held in four zones, the two northern most elected to become Danish, the two southernmost to becom German. We have Danish speaking people south of the border and German speaking people north of the border. ( The Danish school in Flensburg, “Duborg-skolen”, is also frequented by German pupils, some German parents prefer the Danish mentality, the children end up fluent in Danish).