@Owlbread
I don't think Russian government was in charge all over the Crimean Republic. More likely over city of Sevastopol. Just as I said, have been there in 2010, got a friend who lived there for a year and whose grandfather is still living there.
The Crimean Republic's government was predominantly Russian, as it was at the beginning of this year. Nothing has really changed since the early '90s - they even tried to break away and join Russia back then.
Karelians - all over the Wiki article is the word "assimilated". Assimilated by Finland, assimilated by Russia.
Yes, exactly. They only make up 9.2% of the Republic's population and they don't even speak Karelian anymore, yet they have their own ethnic republic. Marvellous, isn't it?
Well, they haven't even tried. They aren't even farming the land they occupy (reclaim). They weren't even trying to make their position better before via legal ways. They were just sitting there and complaining about their horrible fate and cursed Stalin.
I don't think this changes anything at all - they still need houses and, as I've already argued, they should have representation in government. I've heard similar arguments from people in the USA in relation to African Americans and Native Americans and in Australia in relation to Aborigines. Arguably Crimean Tatars are worse-off than any of those people.
@da_nang, bravo, that mental image made my day. Who is this guy and why has he just walked out of the 19th century?
Maybe you should ask President Putin. Dugin is a member of President Putin's inner circle and much of the new Russian "Eurasian" ethos espoused by the government (as opposed to the ethnic Russian nationalism espouses by the opposition) is based on Dugin's ideology. He's almost like Putin's chief ideologue, but not quite because Putin doesn't endorse absolutely everything he says (just most of it).
He is a very, very powerful man. He has close ties to the Russian military and very close ties to the United Russia party, currently adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, the Speaker of the State Duma, one of Putin's closest underlings.