As part of a special issue on Ukraine 5 years after Maidan, the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics has published an article John O’Loughlin and I wrote on the conflict over Crimea (available free access for a limited time). The article highlights what we term ‘scalar disjunctures of legitimacy,’ which is simply a summary phrase for the fact that most of the world condemns Crimea’s annexation/reunification whereas there is consistent evidence that most Crimeans consider this act as legitimate. The commonplace speech act ‘Crimean annexation’ in much of the world de-legitimates the action. Some go further and give the episode a Nazi-frame, referring to it as an ‘anschluss.’

Framed within the longstanding rhetorical formulas of ‘self-determination’ produces a very different reality. A ‘Crimean people’ living in a recognizable and clearly bounded territory exercised their self-determination right and choose to (re)join the Russian Federation.

We term this essentially contested condition the Crimea conundrum.