Originally Posted by
Herod
Err? As far as I know, Russia still has control of Crimea. Wrongly, but without a response, Vlad got away with it.
Just some numbers/statistics from Ukrainian (not Russian) officials as per the following link:
https://ru.tsn.ua/ukrayina/matios-ob...mu-574354.html
Various Ukrainian forces before separation of Crimea / those who preferred to continue with Ukraine and relocated to mainland from penninsula:
MoD (army, air force, navy, etc.): 13468/3990
National guard: 2560/1177
Border control forces: 1870/519
Security ("Ukrainian KGB"): 1614/242
Thus, only one third of military preferred to continue with Ukraine.
The most "dramatic" situation is with security: only 15% demonstrated real loyalty.
P.S. Sorry for off-topic but a potential parallel with China might be with a question whether all the Taiwanese military would prefer to fight with the mainland being a US proxy?