sycasey said:
Cal88 said:
sycasey said:
Cal88 said:
Yes because 85%, percentage confirmed by 3 western polls, is definitely not enough.
It's fun to see when you guys trust polls and when you don't. How much did Trump win by, again?
You know damn well that the margins of a typical US presidential election have nothing to do with the many polls done by western polling agencies in Crimea during and after the referendum, no comparison whatsoever. You're just posting in bad faith, which unfortunately is something that happens fairly often here:
Quote:
Wkiipedia:
Post-referendum polls in Crimea
The results of a survey by the U.S. government Broadcasting Board of Governors agency, conducted April 2129, 2014, showed that 83% of Crimeans felt that the results of the March 16 referendum on Crimea's status [joining Russia] likely reflected the views of most people there, whereas this view is shared only by 30% in the rest of Ukraine.
According to the Gallup's survey performed on April 21-27, 82.8% of Crimean people consider the referendum results reflecting most Crimeans' views, and 73.9% of Crimeans say Crimea's becoming part of Russia will make life better for themselves and their families, while 5.5% disagree.
According to survey carried out by Pew Research Center in April 2014, the majority of Crimean residents say they believed the referendum was free and fair (91%) and that the government in Kyiv ought to recognize the results of the vote (88%).
According to a poll of the Crimeans by the Ukrainian branch of Germany's biggest market research organization, GfK, on January 1622, 2015: "82% of those polled said they fully supported Crimea's inclusion in Russia, and another 11% expressed partial support. Only 4% spoke out against it. ... 51% reported their well-being had improved in the past year."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#Post-referendum_polls
No, here's how this works: you don't get to send your military in and THEN hold a poll or "election" and claim legitimacy. You hold the vote first and then do a peaceful transition. Doing it Putin's way is illegitimate.
If the US held a Puerto Rican statehood vote at literal gunpoint I wouldn't consider that legit either.
Russia didn`t have to intervene in Crimea, in 2014, 18,000 of the 21,000 Ukrainian army stationed in Crimea flipped sides, as that garrison was almost exclusively made up with local Crimeans.
There has not been any "Crimean Liberation Front" or any kind of serious opposition to Crimea having joined Russia within Crimea. What you have instead is a thriving economy and locals, 80% of whom are Russian, that are very happy that Russia was able to rebuild their infrastructure and restore their access to water, which had been cynically cut off by the Kiev government.
Kiev blocked the main canal from the Dniepr feeding Crimea for years, crippling Crimean agriculture, with that water going to waste into the Black Sea. That's how much Ukraine really cares about Crimea...
The Kiev government learned its lesson from Crimea and made sure to staff their personnel in rebel places like Mariupol and Odessa with soldiers from central/western Ukraine. In the Donbass, the locals also switched sides, forming the Luhansk and Donetsk armies, which have stood up to attacks from the Kiev government for 7 years.
