Krymnash

It is interesting to see the regular people in Crimea complain about things in "Our Crimea" ,
I know that exact place in Crimea with my feet, at least 2 or 3 times I have been there. These are good people , simply caught in Geopolitics. Something could actually be said that the Ukrainian language bill, law, passed in Ukraine's Rada amounted to "Discrimination against older people" A lot of people, older people in Ukraine simply were educated in Russian language, regardless of their individual background. Were people in their family sent to Gulags, or were people in their family sending other people to the Gulag? At this point in time, it's only partially relevant to the reality on the street, the people who want to do business and get on with life. Yet the Russian Federation bit off a pretty tough piece of meat from Ukraine, there are plenty of reasons to support a natural, historical connection of Ukraine with Crimea, and if you aren't an idiot, or if you can escape media manipulations entirely, one should simply acknowledge that the entire USA election hacking incident of 2016 that elected Mister Trump was essentially about an attempt to legitimize the seizure by armed force of Crimean territory, and that act, in my opinion, it's just something very uncool. I know people from Crimean families, with different viewpoints. And I ask the media to simply explore the differences, in an unbiased, independent manner, as befitting the standards of International Journalism. This woman conducting the interview, her mom is a high school, intermediate education biology teacher, a local person. One should give her credit for an attempt to get to the truth. Yet the seizure of the territory during the aftermath of Ukraine's Euromaidan, this was a calculated, pre planned event, as I was there shortly before it transpired, I could sense it, like a tidal wave engulfing this pleasant, peaceful, interesting and spiritual place. I could say that I am sad, and say that I am angry, for nobody wins, and everybody suffers this manipulation by the Kremlin and the stupidity of the people running the sho in Ukraine "Like Monkeys with a grenade" was the quote I remember from about 5 years ago.
Yet the USA is continuing it's support of Ukraine, tax payer $$'s in large amounts, and I appreciate this, for the inestimable tasking that Ukraine disarmed the world's third largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the mid 1990's.
perhaps it's difficult for people in the USA to imagine a cherished part of our world being taken over by some crime lord  nicknamed
 "The Goblin "  Aksyonov, a petty local gangster known for enforcing underworld business disputes with a baseball  bat or something like that.
And in Ukraine it is common terminology to speak of RUssian backed proxy forces as the "Orcs".  (As in Lord of the Rings)
There is also a thinly veiled "Narnia" narrative about Ukraine.

I see people in my world do video games and TV sequences, shows to escape. In Ukraine over the last 5 years, there was no reason to escape, every day it was all too real, or weird, or unbelievable. I missed a lot of sport broadcast seasons, a lot of "Game of Thrones" HBO stuff like that, I got to see this process, and all it's Horrors unfold, before my eyes. And no part of it was pretty, or elegant, or clever. It was all very ugly and shocking to witness.

For the men and women fighting the war, fighting the shock to their sensibilities, fighting to survive the effects of being in the conflict, live a normal semblance of life, trying to move past mental and physical injuries so deep in their hearts and minds, many of them totally unprepared for the scope of the conflict, their risks in defending their territory from invaders, could they have stopped it going into Crimea with all their capabilities, or would it have been a grotesque massacre? At this point even History could not measure accurately what the reality could have been like.

I miss visiting the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine. I never had much opportunity to explore all of it's special places, but hey ~ at least I had visited Saki, Alushta, Yalta, Feodisia and Sudak !

Now I suspect even the Russian State workers tire of mandatory vacations to Crimean places devoid of investment in visitor infrastructure. It has become an empty land, with no opportunity, uncertainty, fear of arbitrary arrest. '
Simply a group of older people complaining,  creates a  grave risk for their safety. It is primarily a political situation. Crimea should be a prosperous place. RUssian annexation has mostly failed, failed the people of Crimea, failed the people of Russia, for they pay for this mistake, every day, week month.
What person,  would not feel hostile,  that they had to pass into their own territory controlled by a Hostile Foreign State (Russia) just to go to a favorite seaside beach within their own country, that their summer vacation was permanently ruined. Sure people can go, if they want to cross the line. But they can be detained for any reason, be set up on outrageously cooked up charges of anything at all and face a 20 year prison sentence for something they had no intention of doing. For People in all the parts of Ukraine, a summer visit to Crimea was the big adventure. For sure,  the resorts in Turkey were offering better amenities, service and value than Crimean resorts. This was largely due to the fact that Crimea's citizens made pretty good money off the tourist pulse in summer times, it was their income mostly for the year.  Yet now I assume the Russian tourists,  are tight with their rubles .

https://youtu.be/eqhAgXFBans