Bloomberg:
Russians comprise 59 percent of Crimea’s population of about 2 million, with 24 percent Ukrainian and 12 percent Tatar, 2001 census data show. Russians make up 17 percent of Ukraine’s total population of 45 million.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...t-ignored.html

ABC News:

WHY IT'S PART OF UKRAINE

It only became part of Ukraine when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave the peninsula to his native land in 1954. This hardly mattered until the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and Crimea ended up in an independent Ukraine. Despite that, nearly 60 percent of its population of 2 million identify themselves as Russians.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/...raine-22730722