Eh.

Russia really can't afford it.  And the Europe isn't going to risk it anyway

It's all just big talk for what will be a  few sanctions against some rich dudes who will promptly work through proxies.

1. If UK won't let Scotland go, why are wasting all this time to this stupid referendum then? If there's anything to support your claim, mainstream media are very against it for some reason but that's it really. As an englishmen I support whatever they vote for since it will make no difference to me.

And if we are supposed to not let Scotland go, then we should treat it better. Spread the wealth away from London.

2. It probably was annexation (but disguised as something else) but surely the popular vote must have some weight to it. And I say the US are hypocrites because they may not annex territories but they still don't respect other countries sovereignty. They invaded two countries on a deliberate lie, 9/11 was certaintly a good excuse to invade Iraq and Afghanistan but that don't mean it was right to do so. Just because Russia made it clear Crimea is now theirs, doesn't mean America doesn't do the same. Just because the US isn't annexing territories, it doesn't mean the US doesn't interefere in other countries affairs. Just look up how many coups the CIA has been involved since the 1950's and then you'll realise why the world is so fucked up. 

Kerry can say about international law all he likes, but the US and Israel get away with much unnoticed. The UN is just geninuely useless.

3. Now that's something I wasn't really aware of. I think I saw something about this on Al Jazeera but it wasn't really made a big deal of. I don't support any ethnic cleansing but to be honest we are not going to fight over these people and it's not our fight either. So I don't know what to say. From a realist point of view, it's not our fight anyway. 

USA are the first country to learn that . Rest - I agree

btw Ukrainian troops/goverment are pussies unfortunately. Leaving 99% navy with no shoot, same goes to Crimea,bases etc

2nd btw - Europe/USA fucked Ukraine pretty much.

I don't know what you are talking about with your ethnic cleansing and genocide. They are currently 5.5 millions Tatars in the russian federation, with extended autonomous regional rights, Russia have cleansing problem or what ? Give sources for such a thing happening to Tatars in the last 20 years, I've never heard about it. Really, it sounds like a crazy propaganda, you made it up ?

For the 40% of Tatars voting, I understood. I'm just saying it changes things a lot. In most election very low vote rate largely favors on side or the other. Which one was it, we can't know. As an image, if 20% of the Tatars population are pro-russia, they can form as much as 50% of the 40% voting Tatars.

Putin confirmed  that Tatars living in Crimea will get rehabilitation money + authonomy ( good word ? ) Tatars in response send 2 envys to cooperate with new Crimea goverment.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/01/putin-look-crimea-tatar-rehabilitation.html

1.  Because the refferendum will lose.   Hence why Cameron's original response was basiallly "Lets hol it tommorrow" and the SNP pushed it off.

It's just a political move to embaress the SNP.

2.  Except it wasn't even disguised as anything.

3.   Only like ~100,000 people died...  Which is a small number compaired to the general pile of bodies generated by stalin's soviet Russia.

still I'm not sure if losing between 30-50% of an enthic population due to ethnic cleansing counts as "not a big" deal.

Just because something isn't your fight doesn't mean you have to support it, or want people to support it.

That said, ethnic cleansing sort of is our buisness international law wise.  Even though rarely anything is done about it... and i'd think it's fair to argue that more then a majority vote should be needed for a group of people who suffered such penalties to be forced back into the nation that committed those acts on them.  Espiecially when they themselves are overwhelmingly against it, and a large portion of those who inflicted it opon them just so happen to ethnically be the poeple who inflicted it opon them.

The only thing that makes this "not our buisness" so to speak, is that Russia is fairly powerful.  That's a fine arguement to make, it's logical, but it should be made honestly.  It's not a matter of the US and UK "not bein a hypocrite because of iraq", or "Democratic majority."

It's just cowardice and being selfish.

Which is fine, I wouldn't start a war with Russia either.

That said, I'm not going to pretend to give false morality for the "brave" decision to basically ignore the whoe thing... or even worse, dump on the guy for basically ignoring the situation but at least mentioning so displeasure about the situation.

Where i'm from you blame people for hypocritical bad acts, and cheer them for hypocritical good ones.

The Modern era of no major wars basically boils politics to a game of "who got there first".

The fact that you said last 20 years means you know EXACTLY what i'm talking about.

Soviet Union, 40's, Stalin, collaboration with nazi, post war, it's all over, we are talking about Russia, Putin, the current events, we are in 2014, we need example from the past 20 years, right ? You are mixing everything, Tartars doesn't live in a fear of ethnic cleansing that would make them neglect any economical advantage Russia offers. That's what you said, and that's a pure lie for propaganda sake.

That's not exactly how the Tatar leaders were saying it... and as an armenian who knows a lot of armenians... yeah lasting memories of ethnic cleansing transcend governments and stick to the people who perpetrated them.

I've seen the picture you've posted, but it'd been nice of you to post a link to actual report. But nevermind, I've found it, I've read it already some time ago.

a) For starters, I could disregard it simply due to the fact it being IRI. For those who unaware, IRI is state-funded organization, chaired by Mr. John McCain, the very same McCain, whose apperance in any country with ongoing political instability always end up with bloodshed be it Lybia, Syria or Ukraine. To give you an analogy, it's like if RT will quote VTSIOM by saying "hey, but our survey shows that your elections (or whatever) are cooked" -- given the attitude towards RT certain people express ("it's Kremlin-funded, take it with the grain of salt"), it's a great chance for me to do the same but in regards to IRI.

b) Referendum by its nature is substantially more credible than any kind of survey, so if anything referendum disproves survey, not another way around, because 1) referendum by its nature doesn't rely on respondent groups, no extrapolation, no anything; 2) referendum is better documented including photo and video materials; 3) referendum has its own mechanism to claim its legitimacy, international obververs are the part of it, a bunch of them have been invited to this one particulary.

So the viable way to disprove referendum is for certain observer or a group of them to present (not just make some statement in mass media, but to publish signed report): "here and there we have certain violations that makes us wonder if that was free expression of the will of Crimenian people, we demand a honest investigation bla-blah-blah" -- THAT's how you do it, not just throw words "obviously obvious".

c) But let's give the report a benefit of a doubt and assume that IRI researches are honest and professional people. You never considered that survey and actual political vote doesn't necessarily match for gazillion of reasons? Time pass, cirumstances change (oh boy, in Ukraine they did change in a blink of an eye), quiestions and options slightly differ etc?

Let's take a somewhat similar situation of PMR (or TMR, or simply Transdniestria), yet another enclave that sooner or later will be a part of Russia. Unfortunately IRI doesn't have a survey of PMR specifically (only Moldavia), but thanks to guys from CU-Boulder we could take a look at their survery from June 2010. The part that interests us is "TMR - Part of Russia - overall", it is below 50%:

And here's an actual referendum in PMR from 2006:

Yes to Russia more than 98%, no to Russia less than 2% with total votes nearly 80% from all people who have right to vote. 

So does that survery proves that given referendum with strikingly similar results is cooked as well?