Wrong, they could have packed all 4 astronauts (the 2 that came to the ISS on the dragon and Suni and Butch) into the docked dragon and returned at any point. They only waited for the next dragon (crew 10) so that not only the 3 people using the Soyuz would be left on the ISS. But this would have absolutely been possible. The remaining crew would have used their Soyuz in emergencies anyways, they don’t need the dragon.
There's way more than just them. Thanks to all the delays the 4-man SpaceX Crew-8 [1] stayed on the ISS until October 23rd, becoming the longest Dragon stay ever. And the 3-man crew from Soyuz MS-26 got there on September 11th, and is still there.
In fact reading the Soyuz MS-26 Wiki, one of the many records this whole debacle ended up breaking is that when the MS-26 entered into space, there were more humans in space than ever before, with a total of 19!
Did you read my comment? Currently, there is one Dragon and one Soyuz docked to the ISS. If Crew-9 had left earlier, before the Crew-10 Dragon had arrived, there would have been only the Soyuz left.
Do the Soyuz still touch down in a desert in a place like Kazakhstan or do they touch down on water nowadays? The desert solid ground touch downs seem so brutal.
Soyuz is always landing on ground (except in emergencies, and Soyuz 23 broke through a frozen lake). They do have Retro rockets that are fired shortly before contact and dampened Seats, but from the reports I heard, it's still a very rough landing.
