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Comment by koheripbal | Hacker News Reader

But don't they have the right of self-determination if they want to join Russia?

They can move to Russia. They have as much right to move Crimea to Russia as citizens of Maine do to leave the US and join Canada - e.g. not much.

This is all hypothetical though. What happened in reality is that Russia rolled tanks into a neighboring sovereign country, invading it, and stole a part of it. It's a blatant and egregious act of war.

I was just about to say: The vast majority of northern maine, including most of my family, is "French Canadian", some of them even having French as a first language. Go ahead and try telling them they should belong to Canada and it wouldn't be a big deal if Canada invaded and annexed them. You won't have many friends

I'm not sure how you can get that sentiment from my comment.

I was agreeing, not disagreeing

Someone should tell that to the Kosovans who broke off from Serbia 14 years ago, to jubilation in the US and western Europe.

That was a different context though, with ongoing civil war and strife and no foreign takeover but rather a local independence movement. And there is no point debating this here but your summary is very one sided.

> That was a different context though, with ongoing civil war and strife and no foreign takeover

Not quite a take over but NATO bombing of Serbia does count as foreign interference.

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