Thanks for that; stayed in a hotel near there when I visited Yalta.

I tried using Ukrainian politeness on people in Crimea in ~2011 and got what amounted to "speak Russian or die Americano running dog," so my theory of what happened there is considerably simpler.

Most Crimeans were speaking Russian as a first language well before the takeover (the Russian Empire took the peninsula directly from the Ottoman Empire and started moving Russians in after). You'd be about as likely to encounter Crimean Tartar as Ukrainian.

That's why I find the Crimea situation so complicated, making the big assumption that I have the history correct.

You have the Tatar Exile during WWII, people re-settling the area, and then later Crimea was borderline on being independent or part of Ukraine during the dissolution.

So you end up with the fact that, whether right or wrong, Crimea is full of ethnic Russians who were lukewarm about being part of Ukraine in the first place. So as sketchy as the whole annexation was, was it wrong? I honestly can't say it is, which is probably why Russia felt they were able to take that chance.

> So as sketchy as the whole annexation was, was it wrong?

As a Russian who generally thinks that both Russia and NATO need to back down from the pissing contests they engage in...

Yes, it was wrong. Ukraine was done wrong by it. It was not done legally. Even if it was done with respect to the doctrine of self-determinism (I generally approve of secessionist movements), it was not done correctly. There are correct means of going about secession, and the War in Donbass was not one of them. It was a thin pretense for other geopolitical ambitions.

Most Chechens speak Russian as a second language, and yet...

I don't understand your point. Can you explain?

If Russia can chop Crimea off of Ukraine just because Crimea's residents speak Russian, then maybe Chechnya whose residents speak their own native language deserves the independence from Russia that the Chechens have fought for for centuries.

My impression is that the resolution of the 1993-2000 wars was that the younger Kadyrov (the elder having been blown up) was offered (or proposed?) the RF equivalent of a twenty-first century Marcher Lordship, and both sides found the arrangement acceptable[1]. Is this not the case?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcher_Lord

(What I wonder is how Baskov's marriage had been supposed to take place in Grozny a few years back. On the equation svadba==vodka, my best guess is that although the sale of alcohol is heavily controlled in the Chechen Republic, the consumption of alcohol, at a private party, would not have been.)

Also related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23914667

[1] from time to time I've seen Kadyrov invoke the spectre of foreign separatist influences. Given his paternity and history, a wild guess from the outside is that he'd likely know about such things, from back when the influences were on his side.

Understood, that makes sense.

a bit of recent history - in 1991 or 1992, soon after Ukraine independence a "train of friendship" - a train loaded with several hundreds of Western Ukrainian ultra-nationalists (many wearing insignia and uniforms of OUN-UPA - Ukraine nationalistic organizations which collaborated with Nazi and committed genocide of Polish and Jewish populations in Volyn region in order to make it majority Ukrainian territory) tried to come to Sevastopol. Combined police and Russian Navy forces blocked the train from coming into the city . Small group of the nationalists made their way into Sevastopol by boats, yet being mostly non-armed and outnumbered they could do nothing.

Things were different in 2014 when volunteer battalions of such nationalists were organized under the cover provided by the Ministry of Interior Affairs and thus were legally armed, and "the trains and buses of friendship" were about to go to Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Well, they did still go to Eastern Ukraine while the Crimeans got lucky that Putin decided that it will boost his rating.

Artek is where many from the elite did go back then in 197x-198x. Their children though aren't near any Russian resorts/schools/colleges/etc, they are mostly in Western Europe and US. Even low classes in Russia prefer to go abroad - to Turkey, Egypt, Greece these days - it is cheaper and service is much better.

These are all places where it's also much easier to obtain a visa, (and, in Greece, an easier-path to EU citizenship) as a Russian national.

I have no idea where it ranks on in terms of desirable places to go, but judging from the Instagrams of Russian friends, the Maldives belong somewhere on this list. :)