SIMFEROPOL, February 27. /TASS/. The 2014 reunification with Russia helped residents of Crimea shed "the ethnic minority complex" and the feeling of humiliation, a senior Crimean legislator told reporters.
"The return to the homeland was the most important event in the history of the Crimean Spring when the ethnic minority complex was gone. <...> For a Russian person who used to live in a great country with ambitions and belief in their greatness, in a certain exceptionalism, to become an ethnic minority all of a sudden … [We] were being told that you are Russians and you live in a wrong place, well it was very hard," Vladimir Konstantinov, the speaker of Crimea’s parliament, recalled, as he said that those circumstances made the people there feel guilty.
Things changed after Crimea reunited with Russia, Konstantinov noted. According to him, how the event bolstered development on the peninsula impressed Crimean residents the most.
In 2014, a government coup brought to power the supporters of Euromaidan protests. President Viktor Yanukovich was toppled and forced to flee the country. The predominantly Russian-speaking population of southeastern Crimea refused to support the new Ukrainian government. Crimea held a referendum in which Crimea and Sevastopol voted to join Russia in March 2014.