[Cetric]

A referendum like this has no value. It was issued by a regional parliament (at Simferopol) which had been severely cut in the original composition: Ukrainians and some Tatars had been driven out in order to fulfill orders from Moscow.
And those orders came, up to the point of how high the percentage of affirmation should be...
I would say such a referendum should also not be based on intimidation of the voters. There were thugs in the streets chasing the new dissidents and impeding opposition by threats (dissident in the sense of staying faithful to the ukrainian cause).
Furthermore the referendum had only one option on paper: agreement to the secession. In my opinion, it should also have had a 'nope' option for being barely democratic. Of course we know there was no interest in anything being democratic.
I should add that a referendum based on a series of actions which are clearly criminal (taking over a region by using camouflaged garrison troops acting as 'self-defense groups') must be regarded as illegal, consequently.
It is a dirty coup, from beginning to the end. We should never try to legalize it and not cease to strive for the reestablishment of Ukrainian integrity in the future. Or else it would be an invitation to Putin to try his luck again somewhere else, as he had to feel his opponents are either too weak or too dumb to bring him to an halt.

[Atlantis]

A referendum like this has no value.

We can discuss about the niceties of the referendum until kingdom come, but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of Crimeans wanted it to go this way; even in the West nobody seriously denies this. Thus, the will of the people has been served - period.

It would of course be nice to have had a referendum with international approbation; however, there is not a snowball's chance in hell of Kiev having agreed to a referendum. We all know this. No use pretending otherwise. Thus, the referendum there was was the only referendum possible. Blame Kiev not Putin.

As to this serving as a precedent for Russian action elsewhere, it could only work in comparable circumstances, with an ethnic Russian majority, strong historical ties to Russia and the presence of the Black-see fleet. There are no other places matching those requirements. Thus, it is a false argument.

And as to violating international law, there may have been a little of that as pointed out above, but what most prefer to ignore is that Putin took great care to at least formally respect international law. We all know that the West has no such qualms about violating international law.

If the West wants international law to be respected, then it has to start respecting it first.

[Typhoon]

A referendum like this has no value.

As Atlantis says tell that to the Crimea.

If the situation on the ground in Estonia and Latvia etc. is such that Russia could pull off such a referendum then don't point the blame at Putin but look at the failings of the Latvian and Estonian regimes and their persecuted populations. They set themselves up for such difficulties, its like saying Ukrainians have no legitimate gripe against Yanukovich.

[Cetric]

We can discuss about the niceties of the referendum until kingdom come, but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of Crimeans wanted it to go this way; even in the West nobody seriously denies this. Thus, the will of the people has been served - period.

I doubt it. You have a survey at hands which was not fabricated in Moscow to prove your argument? What I know is that Crimeans have been bribed more or less by offering up to 4x times salaries if they pledge obedience to the new masters. In economy, we'd call this a 'hostile taking over of a company'. Also repressions have been started against Tatars, for example they were not allowed by their new rulers to celebrate their own ethnical festival http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1403792701. Under Kiev this was never an issue. So here you see there are no particularities allowed which have not the blessing of Putin. The leader of Tatars, Dzhemilev, has been banned from re-entering Crimea and protesters against this decision are treated as criminals: http://khpg.org.ua/en/index.php?id=1399254165. More repressions on behalf of Tatars wanting to participate in the Ukrainian parliament voting: http://www.unian.info/politics/1000219-humiliating-border-procedure-to-cut-crimean-tatar-vote-turnout.html. Kiew leaves 47 seats in the new parliament empty for the hopeful return of Crimea and Donbass and consequently delegates from those occupied regions. The number of refugees coming from Crimea is rising, to them accommodations are given in major Ukrainian continental cities. So here you have the new era of prosperity in Crimea. Everybody should favor this?'Human right watch' does not have the best things to say about situation since the coup. People keep 'disappearing', you knew that? http://en.censor.net.ua/news/306019/human_rights_watch_confirmed_disappearance_of_crimean_tatars_and_proukrainian_activists_in_crimea, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlKlEnSaV5w

It would of course be nice to have had a referendum with international approbation; however, there is not a snowball's chance in hell of Kiev having agreed to a referendum. We all know this. No use pretending otherwise. Thus, the referendum there was was the only referendum possible. Blame Kiev not Putin.

It is a speculation whether Kiev would have agreed to such referendum or not, as there was no attempt undertaken (if Crimeans seriously and by own wish would have strived for secession, why they did not set up the issue by themselves? After all, they had a parliament of their own...) in 23 years. They even did not take action on the streets when the secession was done by illegally operating Russian agents (Igor Girkin, who later became 'secretary of defense' in the so-called 'Donezk republic' have been destabilizing and winning Crimea for Putin before being sent to Donbas. All dirty works have been committed by Russians, if Sevastopol garrison troups or thugs paid by Moscow, is only a question of detail. Consequently, without these aggressions and interferences into an independent neighbor country, nothing like a secession and a referendum to make it look better afterwards would have occurred. I wonder how you can support such storyline. You can feel here every minute it is a secret service guy ruling Russia. In contrast to this, the West has no reason to embarrass itself by similar tricks.

As to this serving as a precedent for Russian action elsewhere, it could only work in comparable circumstances, with an ethnic Russian majority, strong historical ties to Russia and the presence of the Black-see fleet. There are no other places matching those requirements. Thus, it is a false argument.

Don't we have the 'comparable circumstances' right now in Donbas? Of course we have. And they did their own fake referendum already in may, strictly after Russian manual as put into action in Crimea previously. And Russian minorities (yes, it needs only a minority to give Putin a hand, not really a majority - same trick as 1938 used by Hitler for segregation of Czech 'Sudetenland' with a local German minority usable as pretext for annexion) can be found in all ex-soviet republics. What a great playground for future attempts of Putin to "collect Russian soil" because that is what he is up to do. In Baltic countries they are pretty aware of it. Or should I say 'afraid'? Do you need a list of such threatened countries? No problem. It is a righteous argument. And capitulation in the issue of any part of Ukraine being stolen is an invitation to do it again and again. Putin is just the right va-banque-player to try this game with pleasure.

And as to violating international law, there may have been a little of that as pointed out above, but what most prefer to ignore is that Putin took great care to at least formally respect international law. We all know that the West has no such qualms about violating international law.

The West does not use such tricks to augment his territory or do you know of such case? Iraq was left alone (now they may regret it) after pulling out, not annexed to become the "52nd state of the US" and of course that was never on the agenda. Now Putin has much less qualms about annexing regions as opportunities arise. Should we tolerate this and where is the end to it? He will become bolder and bolder with lacking resistence (and who could possibly resist Putin if not NATO?) and then do not wonder if he "will be in two weeks in Warsaw" as he himself told EU-commission president Baroso, according to the Polish parliament speaker. You certainly know what the word 'appeasement' policy stands for. The right choice again, this time?

If the West wants international law to be respected, then it has to start respecting it first.

So this logic says, if your neighbor is robbing banks you are allowed to do the same thing? One has to do the first step to shine as a prime example, and dirty-trick-player Putin is not eligible for this task, so the West has to show superiority in morale. After all, the world is watching all this. The West recently has shown much patience with this imperialist or neo-soviet nostalgic, perhaps too much and too long. Putin of course regards his opponents as weak and slow in reaction, so he takes what he wants in a hurry. Resistence is over-due. Or any third-degree-power dictator will try to do the same tricks, thanks to being encouraged by Putin's 'glorious' ways, and the whole world becomes a mess. I am preferring to keep the peace and not play with fire. There is too much at stake, not just Crimea and Donbas.

[Cetric]

As Atlantis says tell that to the Crimea.

If the situation on the ground in Estonia and Latvia etc. is such that Russia could pull off such a referendum then don't point the blame at Putin but look at the failings of the Latvian and Estonian regimes and their persecuted populations. They set themselves up for such difficulties, its like saying Ukrainians have no legitimate gripe against Yanukovich.

In any country you can find a situation suitable for abuse, especially with your own ethnical minority being involved. If not, you can provoke them by yourself if you have a certain affinity with secret agency activities such as Putin (who at the beginning of his career in KGB tried to establish a ring of agents in GDR, unsuccessfully) - for this you have rough guys and specialists like Igor Girkin (see post above in case you never heard of him) who will provide a splendid destabilization working into your hands. And politicians in the Baltics can't simply let Russians do what they want, there is a minimum of required loyalty to the country. Especially if Russian ethnic persons work in position where they can be harmful, like when doing sabotage acts at the crucial moment. Anyone who may believe Putin is his personal God still can chose to emigrate to Russia and seek the less comfortable way of living there, if only his heart is happy thus serving the new fascism as propelled by Alexander Dugin and his movement of 'Eurasianism'. It is no coincidence this dangerous ideological marauder is advising Putin himself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin Yes, it is the new face of Fascism. And this sort of Fascism hates the West, his main opponent, as those people believe.

[Far-Right Sage]

It is hilarious to see the alleged plight of the Tatars played up by Western propagandists as if the vast and overwhelming majority in North America and Western Europe even know what a Tatar actually is or gave two figs for their cause before their television sets told them to. Who the majority of Tatars support retaining sovereignty over Crimea is ultimately inconsequential as they are a minority demographic and Russians are the majority. Most Crimeans speak Russian, identify with Russian culture and history, consider themselves Russian, and fortunately now they truly are again! When the Soviet Union fell to pieces and Ukraine became an independent state in 1991, Crimea should have in reality been returned to Russia then and there.

And what makes Crimea sacred Ukrainian territory? What makes anyone believe the sincerity of anti-Russian think-tanks and West-based organizations when they considered the Soviet Union illegitimate and a monstrous regime throughout its existence only to now hold up as sacred the arbitrary decision made by the Soviet dictator Khruschev with the flick of a pen in the 50's? A decision made without voting of or consultation with the Russian population of the Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian population of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic, or the Crimean population itself?

As for whether the regime of thugs and open servants of every interest outside Ukraine which the parasitic clique infecting the transatlantic community managed to implant in Kiev by force of arms in February would allow the referendum in a piece of Ukrainian territory not protected by a Russian occupation, we don't need to speculate about anything. The instructions from their bosses told them to keep Crimea at all costs, as NATO warships in Sevastopol was one of the ultimate prizes aimed for behind the coup d'etat. We only need to see how the regime is dealing with a separatism rooted in sentiment which rejects their legitimacy as the national government of Ukraine now in parts of the country which are not protected by the Russian Army such as Donbass, with their declared "ATO" against the stalwart heroes of the Russian resistance or even the brutal security crackdown in cities like Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk intended to clear the streets of all anti-coup-regime protesters (with a little help from ruthless mercenary outfits like Academi and foreign advisers sprinkled in, naturally).

I find the question of "Did Russia violate international law in the Crimean crisis?" painfully irrelevant however. The elephant in the room anyone even moderately seasoned in world affairs must see is that international law doesn't really exist, and in the cases where something like it exists in the sense of precedents and taboos which countries are mindful of, those are established by force by the countries capable of force to begin with. Were NATO's actions in Yugoslavia with bombing with no UN Security Council approval and later dismembering and detaching territory from a European nation-state, the territory of Kosovo from Serbia after a unilateral declaration of independence resisted by the actual national government in Belgrade, so that its mining industry could be privatized and one of NATO's largest bases placed to occupy its soil in the heart of southeastern Europe legal or illegal? Was it legal when old Soviet-made East German arms were funneled by Berlin with NATO backing via Albania to paramilitary groups engaged in heroin trafficking and organ smuggling in Kosovo in order to fuel the insurgency against a sovereign country in Europe legal or illegal? Is funding and training opposition movements to destabilize and oppose governments in operations now known in the popular lexicon of the politically savvy as "color revolutions", one of which played out in Ukraine this February, legal or illegal? Is it legal against governments deemed illegitimate by neoliberals because they were not elected like Syria or China? What does that make it when it is done against elected governments previously universally recognized by Russia, the EU, and the United States alike as freely elected and completely legitimate as the Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions was? Is Russia's response to the coup in a border country aimed directly at them and Moscow's immediate national security and defense concerns and the annexation of Crimea legal or illegal?

The answer to all these questions is it really doesn't matter, because the answers of both individuals and governments will be completely and unavoidably tainted by ideology, geopolitics, and interests. Those are the real determinative factors behind the emperor with no clothes known as international law, which is everything and nothing to all international actors concerned depending upon the time of day.

By the by, there was not a thing wrong with the incorporation of the Czech-administered Sudetenland into German territory either. Ethnically similar and contiguous populations should be, generally speaking, allowed to link up and find unity via the representation existence under one state and one voice brings. Russia still has some level of concern for actual ethnic Russians which constitute a large proportion of its own population. That the reigning constituent governments under Brussels and the Western governments of the New World led by Washington D.C. have not only zero regard for their own ethnic populations which founded these states but are in fact actively trying to dilute their respective population groups out of existence with migrant slave labor and mass influxes of foreigners is well known. And just because "nationalism" is a taboo dirty word and considered an enemy concept now under the heel of these radical liberal regimes, it does not mean in any way, shape, or form that other countries share this same diseased orientation.

The West does not use such tricks to augment his territory or do you know of such case?

Hawaii. Half of Mexico, not to mention how many dirty tactics used to suppress parties or governments in Europe not wishing to become the next patch of EU or NATO-held territory, among other things.

Iraq was left alone (now they may regret it)

Left alone after how many thousands upon thousands killed from the invasion, bombing and inevitable resulting chaos of daily suicide attacks and ethnoreligious cleansing, not to mention the punitive embargo placed on even basic materials entering Iraq throughout the 90's designed to punish the population into getting rid of their government so that Western powers didn't have to, to the tune of as many as a million deaths including some 500,000 Iraqi children denied access to even rudimentary medications according to official estimates. When Madeleine Albright was asked of these deaths of half a million children to serve the agenda of her masters in Iraq, she stated for the cameras, "We think the price is worth it".

As opposed to how many killed in the bloodless invasion of Crimea? One?

Get the hell out of here with these comparisons. Russia has been St. Francis of Assisi in comparison in the past twenty years.

not annexed to become the "52nd state of the US"

Yes, a territory landlocked on another continent filled with a 100% non-American, non-white Muslim Arab/Kurdish/Turkmen population. Such would be even a serious candidate for annexation as "52nd state" and completely comparable to Crimea, which lies in proximity to Russia, is filled with a majority of Russian-speaking Russians who identify with Russia and which was part of Russia for centuries until 50 years ago, right?

[Typhoon]

In any country you can find a situation suitable for abuse, especially with your own ethical minority being involved.

This does not really address the point that the Latvian and Estonian 'Russian' problem is entirely of their own making. By failing to integrate and continuing to persecute legitimate members of the population (not to mention joining hostile military clubs without regard for neighborliness) they deserve what they get. If these countries want to rectify the situation there are easy steps to take but they appear quite happy to incite for their own ends, so be it, but they should not get noisy when the rest of the European community does not jump to save them from their predicament.

With respect to Fascism I am far more concerned with whats happening in the Ukraine and Europe's connection to it.

The Barroso comment was taken out of context as the EU has admitted so just like the Tusk non-incident there is no substance to this Russian threat nonsense.

In contrast to this, the West has no reason to embarrass itself by similar tricks.

Yet sadly so often does.

[spodi]

I think so but being the impartial prick that I am I found it just a little ironic when John Kerry as a senator, voted to invade Iraq yet framed Putin as an archiac bully for violating another countries sovereignty. I guess times change in 11 years, huh? Lol oh politics, how I love you.

[Atlantis]

what I know is that Crimeans have been bribed more or less by offering up to 4x times salaries

Just like the 18 million former GDR citizens were bribed into abandoning their country by being offered 1 DM West for each of their 1 DM East.

If that was wrong, let us revers history, give back Eastern Europe to Russia and Russia will give back Crimea to to Kiev. Do we have a deal?

It is a speculation whether Kiev would have agreed to such referendum or not,

Yes, and we all believe in Father Christmas too ...

Go, and tell it to the goats!

Don't we have the 'comparable circumstances' right now in Donbas?

Why didn't Kiev want a referendum in Donbass? According to you, Kiev doesn't oppose referendums on independence.

The West does not use such tricks to augment his territory or do you know of such case?

When we talk about global hegemony, physically occupying foreign territories becomes impossible. Thus, the West does not aim for physical occupation of territory but to bring countries like Ukraine under Western control by regime change, etc.

So this logic says, if your neighbor is robbing banks you are allowed to do the same thing?

Your analogy is wrong. The correct analogy is the mass murderer accusing a traffic offender of violating the law.