With regard to Crimea, this will probably result in an economic cold war with Russia, like the first one the Russians lost and will probably lose again. Russia may well have the largest land-mass, immense resources and a good-sized army, but economically they’re second rate; a one-sided commodity economy overly dependent on resource export, a blatantly corrupt and kleptocratic government and an ancient, decrepit infrastructure badly in need of repair.

The Russian ruble has been cratering for a while now and so has their stock exchange; the Russian Central Bank is having to spend billions in an effort to prop up the ruble, and after this bullshit stunt, the ruble is going to get hit hard yet again.. Crimea adopting the ruble won’t save them and frankly, Crimea annexing itself to Russia will very likely end up becoming economically isolated and backward - a poor oblast. Tourism will be isolated to the Russian market only and its exports will probably suffer sanctions. It’s a lose/lose all around, but mostly for the Crimeans and the Russians. Ukraine will shift clearly towards the West, the former Eastern Bloc nation-states (not to mention the EU) will distrust Russia even more and the political divide between East and West will pretty much end up right on Russia’s western borders, maybe with the exception of Lukashenko in Belarus, but he’s sort of an anomaly.