Putin’s gambit: Is Crimea worth it?

The result of the referendum in Crimea on Sunday was predictable. Close to a hundred percent of the voters chose to break away from Ukraine and return to Russia’s fold.

For Crimea’s ethnic Russians, who dominate that region’s populace, being part of the motherland again is a long-cherished deliverance. In 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics decreed that Crimea was to be annexed to Ukraine. The supreme leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, was a Ukrainian. The annexation, the Kremlin explained, was its gift to Ukraine, and acknowledges “the economic commonalities, territorial closeness, and communication and cultural links” between Crimea and Ukraine.