Brave New World?

[...] Crimea - a Russian-majority peninsula that juts into the Black Sea - saw its regional parliament vote unanimously in favor of rejoining the Russian Federation on Thursday after 60 years spent under Ukrainian control.

[...]

Met with condemnation by the new government in Kiev and the international community as a whole, the odds are stacked against Crimea. But with a public referendum on the matter slated for March 16, it is pushing forwards nonetheless — and wading into murky waters.

“We genuinely don’t know what would happen,” said Richard Gowan, a political analyst with NYU’s Center on International Cooperation. “Generally, a transfer of territory cannot be based simply on a unilateral declaration by the inhabitants of that territory.

Which is surely the only way such a transfer SHOULD happen.