Uh huh. How can Russia negotiate on behalf of people they have no affiliation with.
Yup.
And I would add that most of the non Russian affiliates, what small number they were, seem to be losing interesting and leaving the protests.
LOL! That's what I was thinking.
"Not that we have any control over the Russ .. I mean, free-thinking, Ukrainian citizens occupying those buildings."
“Uh huh. How can Russia negotiate on behalf of people they have no affiliation with.”
Russia has had a long affiliation with the people and territory of Crimea.
Just 50 years ago that territory and population were part of Russia proper as it had been sense 1784. The largest share of the population is Ethic Russian not Ukrainian, and of course until the 1990’s all of it was part of the USSR.
One could say with some accuracy that Russia has stronger ties to Crimea than does the Ukraine.
“Uh huh. How can Russia negotiate on behalf of people they have no affiliation with.”
That depends upon how you define affiliation, if you do it th eway we do it in North America then the Russians were just owners of Crimea for most of the last 230 years. (up until just the 1950’s in fact)
However if you look at it the way Eurasians typically do with the eyes of ethnicity and language then Russia would point out that Crimea is 60% Russians and only 24.0% Ukrainians
Russians: 1.45 million (60.4%),
Ukrainians: 577,000 (24.0%),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea
That doesn’t mean much to us, but it does mean a lot to them.
Probably something to do with the strong pro-Russian sentiments shared by a majority of those living in east Ukraine.