In theory, there's nothing wrong with people voting for independence from one country, or voting to join a country they feel a closer affiliation with than the one they're currently a part of. After all, the United States and the West were supportive of Kosovo and South Sudan when they decided to break away from regimes that were waging war against them.
In general, though, states don't like it when borders are redrawn, and not just due to conservatism or a fondness for the old maps. The champions of Western liberalism are not exempt from internal demographic issues: the United Kingdom controls a portion of an adjacent island that some would very much like to merge with the rest of Ireland, Spain has Basque separatists not content with status as an autonomous community, and even in the United States there are fears that a growing Hispanic population might try to reclaim former Mexican territories in the southwest. True, none of these communities can claim to be persecuted or victimized to the extent of Kosovo or South Sudan, but support for the latter breakaway states may cause the former to ask why they can't enjoy the same self-determination.
More than that, such sentiments would wreck havoc with the post-colonial world. When carving up the continent of Africa in particular, the European colonial powers famously ignored traditional ethnic or cultural boundaries, and in some cases purposely divided populations so that an empowered minority would be dependent on its colonial masters for survival against a disenfranchised majority. The countries that emerged when colonialism petered out were unstable enough without a myriad of ethnic groups fighting to redraw arbitrary borders or form new nations, and thus the newly-liberated Third World was encouraged to either support multinationalism or create a new national identity based on an artificial state. Such sentiments have since spread to the rest of the planet as increased immigration and shifting populations have challenged traditional notions of the nation-state, leading to a burgeoning "European" identity on one continent and no small amount of tension in countries with surging numbers of foreign workers - Qatar notably has its citizens outnumbered by such laborers.
So Kosovo and South Sudan are exceptions rather than the rule. Should Crimea be another? Overlooking for the moment that this flash of "self-determination" is taking place with thousands of undeclared Russian troops watching over these free and fair elections, and the options are "join Russia immediately" or "go indpendent," with no choice to remain a part of Ukraine.
As of a 2001 census, 60% of Crimeans identified as Russian, and the majority of its population speaks Russian. During the Soviet era, Crimea used to belong to the Russian republic until Khrushchev transferred it to the Ukrainian republic in 1954, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, Crimea chose to remain a part of Ukraine, but with significant autonomy. We could complain that this would have been a better time for the region to separate from Ukraine, but from its history, Crimea has a strong argument for becoming part of Russia.
True, Ukrainian death squads haven't been trying to purge the region of Russians, but Crimea's view of the new government in Kiev as a bunch of Nazis, combined with that parliament's move to revoke a law giving Russian status as a regional language - in effect forcing Crimea to use another nation's tongue as its official language - evidently caused enough alarm to produce in 2014 the separatist movement that failed to succeed in 1991. The invasion of unmarked Russian troops was of course a happy coincidence.
So Crimea may have legitimate reasons for becoming part of Russia, which is probably what's going to happen anyway.
We might be able to mollify some of Crimea's concerns, urge it to remain a part of Ukraine for a year or so and see how the new government turns out once the upcoming elections are over. Maybe the most unpalatable of Ukraine's fascist element will fail to win any seats, and perhaps we could encourage them to keep their heads down for the sake of the old borders. Another obvious move would be to urge Kiev's government to reinstate Ukraine's language law and allow Crimea's autonomous government to conduct its business in its own language. And of course we could try bribes, reminding Crimea that it could share in foreign aid packages to Ukraine, assuming we could outbid Russia.
Unfortunately, even if the Crimean people decide they'd rather remain part of Ukraine, there's no guarantee that Putin would accept that any more than he accepted the Ukrainian people turning on Yanukovych. And again, the presence of all those Russian troops severely hampers Crimeans' ability to freely determine their region's destiny. So any attempt to sway the masses in Crimea is probably a wasted effort.
On the other hand, if Putin is suddenly interested in national self-determination, maybe we could ask Chechnya and other Russian-minority federal subjects if they want to remain a part of the Russian Federation, or go independent...
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