On Wed, 3 Jul 2019 at 04:43, Michael H Deckers via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
     tzdb currently has the switch in Simferopol from
     2014-03-30T02:00 to 04:00, following the announcement in
     [https://vz.ru/news/2014/3/17/677464.html] from 2014-03-17.

     But the clocks of the main station shown in the video at
     [https://www.rt.com/news/crimea-clocks-moscow-time-173/]
     advance from 22:00 to 00:00. If this is not a fake, the
     switch happened 4 hours earlier.

This apparent discrepancy in reporting was discussed contemporaneously on-list and is already noted in commentary.
https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2014-March/020814.html
https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2014-March/020815.html

Specifically:

# Simferopol and Sevastopol reportedly changed their central town clocks
# late the previous day, but this appears to have been ceremonial
# and the discrepancies are small enough to not worry about.

As it so happens, the RT article you linked confirms that particular perspective — that the 22:00 transition was merely "ceremonial" and that the 02:00 transition was official — more clearly than we had identified at the time.  Quoting the article:

…the hands of the main railway station clock in the city of Simferopol jumped from 10 pm to 12 am on Saturday. […] The ceremony follows the region’s formal joining the Russian Federation on March 21. Other Crimeans, apart from Simferopol, the region’s capital, were expected to switch their clocks at 2:00 am on Sunday, AFP reported.

It appears India's Business Standard also contemporaneously reported the same, at https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/crimea-to-set-clocks-to-russia-time-114033000014_1.html:

…a symbolic ceremony will be held to move the clocks forward at the railway station in the main city of Simferopol.  The Black Sea peninsula's prime minister Sergei Aksyonov will oversee the switch at 10pm (midnight Moscow, 2000 GMT).  Europeans and ordinary Crimeans make the daylight savings time switch at 2am tomorrow.

Since the zone is meant to represent the region as a whole, and not necessarily one or two clocks in the town squares in the representative city, this is why we settled on 2014-03-30 02:00 for the transition.

--
Tim Parenti