Back in the USSR with you, Crimea!

Aha, so we see the standard communist tactic of a referendum with '97%' of all who voted plumping for 'returning' to Russia (the Kremlin has already framed the debate to the extent that western commentators trying to be neutral talk about reunification rather than mere unification or adhesion - it's plain annexation).  I'd like to see the turnout figures but I'd imagine they would be similarly doctored in a ballot that no independent observers were allowed to oversee.  Albania once got 99.99% on an internal referendum in favour of the programme of the Communist Party there (an administrative error meant it failed to get complete consent).  Still Albania and Crimea, while impressive, aren't quite as good as Saddam Hussein who, under pressure from George W Bush in the years between 9/11 and the 2003 invasion, organised a referendum on his rule.  100% voted positively for his continuous rule.  What a popular guy he was!
Of course, when all 'national' TV and radio is broadcast from Moscow (with its propaganda) rather than Kiev, Russian troops have flooded the peninsula and placed all Ukrainian forces under lockdown, where no locals are allowed in or out of Crimea, when the ballot paper has options either for joining Russia or effectively making Crimea independent and no option for the status quo, the ballot is held one week after being announced by the authorities, when Russian music blares out of polling stations and where the self-proclaimed Crimean president declares of his certainty of a vote for union with Russia, to get only 97% is a pretty poor show.  Let's ignore that before the crisis, only 41% of Crimeans were polled as wishing to join Russia.
The Kremlin claims that an armed coup forced out Viktor Yanokovych, but it was he who fled and the parliament, not the protestors, who organised a new government.  There has been an armed coup in the Ukraine and that is the one engineered by Russia in the Crimea.  I can understand the West's rollout of ever harder sanctions on a gradual basis rather than using the nuclear option (economically) straightaway as it leaves open the door for negotiations.  But the time is rapidly approaching when the City of London and Wall Street must close their exchanges to Russian business and refuse to allow Russian energy firms to denominate their transactions in sterling, dollars, yen, euros (or any other western currency).  Russia will then turn to China, thus in making Crimea its protectorate, Russia will become a protectorate of Beijing to stave off dire economic straits (Russia was already suffering capital flight that hadn't previously been deterred by a lack of the rule of law).  Was Crimea worth all that?