[aguaviva]

Ask historians: you may get surprised.

What they will tell you is -- up until the genocide against the Tatars (and other groups), the majority of its population was always solidly non-Russian.

And that its prior ownership by whichever colonial powers is entirely irrelevant to its current legal jurisdiction.

Which is unambiguously Ukrainian.

[mdp2021]

Well, one example is Gérard Chaliand, who is very flat on (his conclusions on) the matter soon after the question at 14:16 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr5PRtnqaWI

[aguaviva]

And when he flatly says "the population became 80-85 percent Russian", he's referring to the time period after the 1944 genocide (which he's choosing not to mention for for some reason). Before which the Russian population was, as he knows, always a minority. Moreover, essentially all of the influx of non-indigenous groups after 1783 was as a result of settler-colonialist policies of the Russian and Soviet empires. Before which the population was 93 percent Tatar, about 7 percent other groups -- with no Russian population to speak of.

Which he's also not telling you, for some reason.

See also: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lying_by_omission