You are talking about people
freely deciding among themselves whether to stay together or move apart.
That's not the case here. Many of the Russians living in Crimea do not have Ukranian passports - they have Russian passports. They've moved into the area. Then their govt has sent troops into the area. And Crimea was forced to conduct a vote with the foreign troops on their soil menacingly asking them to vote to become another country.
It's equivalent to American troops moving into Quebec and then the Quebecois holding a vote to join the USA as a result. Would you really regard that vote as an honest vote?
An example from history - the
Anschluss, where the Germans marched into Austria, annexed it claiming that the Austrians wanted to be part of Greater Germany and held a referendum to "prove" it. That vote was won with 98.9% voting "yes".
Not that different to teh Crimean vote of 95.6% voting yes to join Russia.
Where do you get unanimous votes like that, outside of places where people are menaced into how they should vote?
Can you seriously imagine those pesky Quebecois voting 95% to agree on
anything, even the price of bread?
Of course not. It wouldn't be normal. Even in tiny council wards you don't get a 95% vote. Unanimity is not normal. Alarm bells should be ringing out in your head, and yet you are reacting almost like people in the 1930's did to the Anschloss.
Once this kind of thing is allowed, where does it end? Should China claim Taiwan back? Should they claim Siberia back (It was theirs before 1860)? Should Mexico claim Texas and California?
And Putin
has broken an international treaty - Russia signed a treaty in 1994 that they would respect Ukraine's sovereignty, and they haven't.
