Why was Russia able to take over the Crimea so quickly and with so little resistance?

The Russian ethnic majority in the Crimea in and of itself did not translate into widespread separatist sentiments. Political mobili­zation around the slogan of “return” to Russia was the product of several interrelated factors.

As a result, the peninsula's Russophone population, including many ethnic Ukrainians, developed an idealized image of Russia. Affluent Russian tourists helped Crimean seaside resorts to stay afloat, and the Russian navy also contributed to the economy in many ways. State-owned Russian television, a major news source for most Crimean residents, projected an image of Russia as a country with a high standard of living, headed by a strong president, who was reining in the oligarchs. This message resonated well with the post-Soviet nostalgia that had kept the Communist Party in power in the Crimea for a decade after the Soviet Union disintegrated. The Crimean elites also cultivated closer economic and cultural contacts with Russia in order to underscore their region's special status.

Nevertheless, in the years before the Russian annexation, public opinion polls in the Crimea remained inconclusive, indicating only minority support for joining Russia. Tellingly, a May 2013 Gallup poll showed unemployment and rising prices to be by far the greatest concerns for Crimeans.

As soon as Yanukovych fled from Kyiv in February 2014 and the Party of Regions began disintegrating, the Crimean elites seized their chance. They had much to lose. A revolutionary government in Kyiv could parachute in new functionaries, destroy their corrupt schemes (or reassign them to its own oligarchs), or side with the Crimean Tatars on the land claims issue. Of course, none of these concerns could be used as a pretext for armed resistance, so the prop­aganda war against the EuroMaidan Revolution focused instead on the “neo-Nazi coup” in Kyiv threatening the Crimea's Russian culture. The Russian media belabored the same themes. There was extensive television coverage of the 20,000-strong anti-Ukrainian rally in Sevastopol on February 23, but no cameras were rolling on the morning of February 27, when 60 armed men in unmarked uniforms captured the Crimean parliament building and hoisted the Russian flag. Functioning literally at gunpoint, the parliament passed a motion on secession from Ukraine and a referendum to confirm it. Parliamentary speaker Vladimir Konstantinov, who also doubled as the Crimean boss of the Party of Regions, stayed on and in due course joined Putin's United Russia Party. However, the par­liament installed a new premier, Sergei Aksenov, from an openly pro-Russian party, which had only a few seats.

On the same day, commandos with no insignia captured Simferopol Airport and established checkpoints on the isthmus connecting the Crimea to mainland Ukraine. Beginning in early March, they took over government buildings and blockaded Ukrainian army units on their bases. Local volunteers and Russian “Cossacks” also took part in these operations, but regular Russian army units clearly constituted the majority, although President Putin denied their involvement until mid-April. Even afterward, the Russian authorities argued that Russian troops in the Crimea never exceeded the treaty allotment of 25,000, as if this somehow justified their complicity in severing the Crimea from Ukraine.

With the Crimean elites casting their bid with Russia and the lack of any strong pro-Ukrainian voice among the public, defending the Crimea was next to impossible. Not only had successive Ukrainian governments neglected the army, but they had also staffed most Crimean formations with local conscripts and officers, who chose to remain on the peninsula under Russian rule. An acting commander of the Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet and his immediate replacement both defected to Russia at this time. Some middle-ranking officers and their crews resisted, but were overwhelmed and deported to the mainland. Russian forces captured all local army installations and Ukrainian navy ships, only some of which were subsequently returned. The Ukrainian flagship, Hetman Sahaidachny, happened to be at sea at the time and dropped anchor at Odesa instead. Throughout the conflict the Ukrainian authorities never authorized the use of force against the attackers in the Crimea.

A hastily organized referendum on March 16, 2014, report­edly produced a 96.77 percent vote in favor of joining Russia. The following day, the Crimean parliament declared independence from Ukraine and asked to be admitted into the Russian Federation, which request was duly granted by the Accession Treaty signed in the Kremlin on March 18.