First, let’s go back a little bit in history to understand the current situation. At the end of the cold war, the USSR was divided between the previous soviet republics which made sense for most of Eastern Europe with important exceptions like Belarus (going back to the 9th century with Kievan Rus'), Ukraine, or Georgia (within Russia since 1800) that historically are part of #Russia (before the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and going back centuries).

Let’s remember that Russia was born in Kiev (Rus’ with the Prince Oleg during the 9th century), that they share the same language (Ukrainian is a completely artificial language created by the soviets). Ukraine has always been part of Russia. Crimea has been Russian since 1873 when Catherine the Great beat the Turks and annexed the peninsula. So Crimea has been Russia before even the French revolution. If the US government wants Russia to give back Crimea, then they should give back Hawaii (annexed by the US in 1898) to the natives, California (annexed in 1848) or Texas (annexed in 1845) to Mexico...

Then Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 decided to transfer Crimean Oblast from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic which did not change anything since all the Soviet Republics were part of the USSR and Nikita Khrushchev could not even imagine that it would stop existing 40 years later.

Boris Eltsine for pure political calculations to oust Mikhail Gorbachev decided with the Belavezha Accords in December 1991 that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus would become independent states (without asking the population if they agreed in a truly soviet fashion!).

In January 1991, a referendum was held and 94% of the population wanted to rejoin Russia (a very similar number to the one held by Russia in 2014). For some reason, I’m sure it’s a coincidence, you never see these facts mentioned by the New York Times, the BBC or Le Monde. Let me know what you think, I will be publishing several follow-up to this article.