Financial Times: Crimea poll will be divorce at gunpoint
On Sunday 2 million people in Crimea will vote in a hastily arranged referendum on the future of the peninsula. First, voters will go to the polls under the barrel of a gun. This is not an environment in which citizens can freely make up their minds at the ballot box. Second, Russian speakers living in Crimea cannot assert a right to secede on the grounds of persecution … the claim that Russian speakers in Crimea have been the victims of Ukrainian fascist thugs is patently a fiction.
Third, Russia’s championing of Crimea’s right to independence is highly inconsistent.
This is not a peaceful and consensual referendum akin to the one happening in Scotland. Instead, it is a figleaf for a forced territorial annexation – the first on the European landmass since the end of the second world war.