One should not confuse Russian speakers and Russian ethnicity with support for Russia.

One of the Kremlin’s most effective distortions of history is the false claim that Crimea was “always Russian.” In reality, Crimea has an incredibly rich recorded history stretching back more than two-and-a-half millennia and was not occupied by Russia until the late 18th century.

Likewise, the Crimean Tatars were the majority of the ethnic population until the 20th century. Russians became the dominant ethnic group through ethnic cleansing of the local inhabitants under the Russian Empire and Soviet Union.

Even with regards to this, a majority of Crimeans voted for independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. And likewise a vast majority of Crimeans did not want to join Russia in polling before the occupation of Crimea in 2014.