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People speaking a language is not a useful way of choosing your borders. Otherwise most of Latin America can revert to Spanish control, the US can be annexed by
by hkt 7y ago
People speaking a language is not a useful way of choosing your borders. Otherwise most of Latin America can revert to Spanish control, the US can be annexed by the UK, countries like Morocco can be colonies of the French again. The fact is that spreading your language is a basic element of empire building. The fact that Crimea, Ukraine etc have so many Russian speakers reflects their past.
- mamon 7y agoI think what GP meant is that majority of people in Crimea self-identify as Russians, not Ukrainians - 68%, according to Wikipedia [1] Similar thing can be said about disputed teritorries in the east, around Donbas. Of course that's still not the excuse for what Russia did, taking both places by force, however, this makes fixing this more complicated. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Demographics
- lgats 7y agoEthically identifying as Russian is certainly not equivalent to identifying as a Russian.