Sorry if I sound like I'm beating a dead horse here, but again, the Irish analogy works well:
"It is a mystery how the northern Irish, who live in Belfast, were given Irish citizenship at a time when many people who have lived and worked in Ireland for several years cannot get it. The northern Irish do not pay Irish taxes and do not serve in the Irish army. They have no duties, they have only rights. The Irish government is reluctant to take care of many of its citizens living in Ireland and to protect their rights."
The above paragraph as edited is 100% factual. Anyone born in the part of this island that is under British jurisdiction is entitled to Irish citizenship on the same basis as those born in independent Ireland. That's in the Irish constitution. Furthermore, it's widely assumed that in the event of a British withdrawal, those residents of the north that still wanted British citizenship would be granted it, for at least a generation or two. Nobody here seems to have a problem with this. I would be surprised if similar arrangements didn't exist in many other disputed territories. Russia's policy of giving citizenship to the residents of a territory that aspires to rejoin it is neither unprecedented nor, it seems to me, particularly remarkable.