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“Do you honestly think the vote in Crimea was a fair and balanced reflection of what the people there actually
wanted? I don’t.

I can’t say if the referendum (or whatever the proper term would be), would have passed anyway, but I don’t think there has ever been an election were over 90% of the people are of the same mind.”

Goes back to my German Jew analogy - if the Jews could have voted to remove themselves from Hitler’s rule shortly after he took power, I have no doubt that 90% would have. If you research what the Russian-speaking people in Crimea were thinking when the hostile government took over in Ukraine, you’d likely conclude that even 90% may have been low - they were literally scared to death.

Other areas of Ukraine had more of a mix of Ukrainians and Russians, so 90% was less likely (unless the Ukrainians boycotted elections, knowing they would lose). It’s a very linear scale in that country, going from nearly pure-Russian speakers in the very far East (and Crimea) to nearly pure-Ukrainian speakers in the West. The question was where to draw the line between a bilingual society in the East and a Ukrainian only society in the West. Before the war, that line was very far east, but since then, it has been moving further and further West and unless the Neocons finally call the war off, there may be little or nothing left of a Ukrainian-only country - regardless of how mad the West get about it, since Russia now gets to draw that line.