[RFERL.ORG] Britannia's top diplomat says Russia "must return Crimea to Ukraine," calling the Kremlin's forcible annexation of the Black Sea peninsula last year "completely unacceptable." "The annexation of Crimea was illegal and illegitimate in March 2014, and remains illegal and illegitimate in March 2015," British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said in March 22 comments posted on the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office's website.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine after sending troops there and staging a secession referendum on March 16, 2014, that was declared illegal in an overwhelming vote in the UN.
Hammond called the referendum a "sham" and a "fig leaf" for Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...'s "land grab."
"This behavior threatens international security and has grave implications for the legal order that protects the integrity and illusory sovereignty of all states," Hammond said.