My father’s friend from the Crimea says that everybody in the Crimea who works, has a business [i.e. has adapted to the post-Soviet reality] is perfectly happy with the region remaining part of Ukraine.
However, the Soviet holdovers who don’t want to work and are confident that they will get better handouts from Putin than they can get out of the Ukrainian government all want to become part of the Russian Federation.
And in my native city of Kharkov, the split doesn’t occur along language or ethnic lines either. Those who want to be part of Russia are simply those who know that the RF has more money to spread around in handouts. We are seeing this split inside actual families we know where everybody has the same ethnicity and speaks the same language.
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment