This is an interesting piece of news:
Ukraine's impoverished army allowed contract soldiers to serve near their homes, meaning that a great many of the Ukrainian soldiers in those bases were actually local Crimean lads, says Valery Ryabkikh, an expert with Defense Express, a Kiev-based security consultancy.
"Our army was chronically underfunded and pacifist moods were widespread. Unfortunately, as a money-saving measure [the army] recruited from the local population, meaning that many of the troops on the ground there had local connections," he says.
Some reports suggest as many as two-thirds of the Ukrainian servicemen stationed in Crimea may have opted to remain and switch their allegiances to Russia rather than return to mainland Ukraine.
Other than the Ukrainian marines who held out at Feodosiya, who have been redeployed northwest of Crimea, the Ukrainian units in Crimea surely lacked the cohesiveness to resist the Russian stealth invasion because too many were either pro-Russian or anti-dying for Ukraine.
That failing greatly reduced Ukraine's options for fighting for Crimea or even passively resisting for long using troops in Crimea.
