CRIMEA I get that Crimea has the best of both worlds if it stays part of Ukraine

CRIMEA

I get that Crimea has the best of both worlds if it stays part of Ukraine, but has Russia’s backing. In effect it gets to play the Black Sea version of Hong Kong. If brought back into Russia directly it would have less autonomy that it does as a ‘leased territory’.

(FWIW: stopping the Russians from taking over the Ottomans (the crimean war) was yet another stupid thing we did. Added to the list of many stupid things we did. Sigh…)