[jwieczorek]

Please, let's look at the facts. Here we have a case where the population of the territory in question would in no way describe this state of affairs as an occupation. They did vote in favour of Crimea becoming part of Russia and the international objections have to do with legal concerns, not the well-being of the population (with, at most, an exception of some Crimean Tatars, but they're a small minority). So, the U.S. are effectively punishing the people of Crimea for voting the way they did. Is that a good policy? I don't think so, it will only give boost to anti-Americanism. If it's about targetting the economy of Crimea as a whole, then I don't think that will work, since Russia has been subsidizing it the whole time at a grand scale, and Russia together with some European states will find a way around it (we have seen that with the Siemens turbines, for example). Moreover, moves like this will only give fuel to the project of building a sovereign Internet that the Russian government has been pushing forward.

[Sommer_Son]

Yes, let's look at the facts.

Russia invaded Ukraine, broke into Crimean parliament and held illegal referendum _after_ that.

So, sanctions were not because of the referendum, but because of invasion.

[jwieczorek]

Sure, and falsified all the votes? The Crimean parliament proclaimed sovereignty against their will and so was the Ukrainian navy chief forced to switch allegiance?

When it comes to the reasons behind sanctions, there's no need to correct me, because I wrote just that: that the international reactions were a response to, in the words of the sanctioning countries, international law being violated (as if that had not happened before, see the Kosovo case), and namely the principle of territorial integrity. All I'm saying is that sanctions targetting the people who expressed their will in the referendum are counter-productive. If there were people left in Crimea, who still haven't made their mind up whose umbrella Crimea would be best off under (though comparing the mayhem state Crimea was left in after the Ukrainian rule and the investments going on there since 2014 – I doubt there are many), then acts like this will surely make them anti-American, not anti-Kremlin. This was my point.

The legality of the Crimean referendum might be an interesting question for lawyers or political scientists (especially the double standards observed in the rhetoric of the US and its satellite states). Or for us, not living there. For the people who voted in the referendum and have seen their lives improve as a result of their vote – it just doesn't matter. And that's the reality some should accept, while rejecting it leads to sloppy analysis of issues like the one discussed in this very post.

[sega_sai]

Even forgetting the illegality of the referendum and that it was done under occupation -- the results of the so-called referendum were completely falsified. See e.g. here https://kireev.livejournal.com/1095568.html (in russian, from a person who professionally analyzes elections) And personally I do think that it is possible that the majority of people in Crimea did want to join Russia, however we'll never know, because nobody cared to find out.