I'll start answering. Mr. Czolij is more astute when it comes to the politics and the polity there.
When you think about the makeup of Crimea, I'm not quite sure of the numbers, but over 50% of the people consider themselves to be Russian. Then another 20%, or close to 20%, would be Tatars and another 20% to 25% would be ethnic Ukrainians, or of other descent. The borders are always kind of shifting. If my mother is Russian and my father is Ukrainian, sometimes I am Ukrainian and sometimes I am Russian. I'm not talking about myself but generally, the statistics.
Crimea, when you think about it from the standpoint of Ukraine, is a very heavily subsidized region of Ukraine. The capital city is 80% subsidized by the federal government and the entire peninsula of Crimea is subsidized about 65% by the government. It's interesting that this had been used against Ukraine by the eastern regions, which maintain that it's western Ukraine that is mainly subsidized, but there are a lot of subsidies that go there.
You were asking whether there are any loyalties to Russia. Yes, there are. It would be wrong to deny it. Some 60% of the people are Russians, so there is strong sentiment. However, the elected officials of Crimea have always said that they belong to Ukraine, that they are part of Ukraine. They have autonomy, and I think the Ukrainian parliament had tabled a motion for wider autonomy for Crimea.
When the last government came to power, the gentleman who right now represents himself as president, only got, what, 4% of the votes in the last Crimean election. But he is known as the one who embezzles lots of funds, so of course for him, a stabilization of the region, supported by Russian forces, would be appropriate.
Quite often, the card of Ukrainian nationalism, if I may put it that way, is played in Crimea, and the reason for that is that Crimea has all 158 channels from Russia and only selected channels from Ukraine. Before events in Maidan, the media was controlled mainly by the Russian president. So there is no objective opinion. Whatever the media feeds you, that's what you believe is the truth.