I can't reply to gk1 for some reason, but he's exaggerating. Russian's are still a minority, not half the population as he/she suggests. According to wikipedi

I can't reply to gk1 for some reason, but he's exaggerating. Russian's are still a minority, not half the population as he/she suggests. According to wikipedia it's around 17% of the population. Russia has a lot of control over Ukraine however since over half of their exports go to Russia (and those exports are generally of poor quality that likely couldn't be exported elsewhere) and they're also heavily reliant on Russia for natural gas...