I was expressing my frustration at another day of "Diplomats gonna diplomasize".
I'm pretty sure, even in the best possible circumstances, ideally with the military part of this being over, this will last quite a while, months possibly.
Putin will make a statement tomorrow. Crimea is preparing joining Russia, which will take a while. In terms of sanctions and diplomacy, we're still negotiating, that means no side blows all their leverage in one go. I don't think Putin will give up on Crimea after all this effort. There will be more talks in the next weeks and it might become a long economic pissing contest. And that's just in the best case, if anything goes wrong, this might still blow up.
What would be the difference though? Crimean citizens will have Russians passports, and will just have to go through Russia for all their international dealings.
Disputed sovereignty raises lots of legal issues though. From now on Russian tourists in Crimea will be entering Ukraine illegally.
Yeah, this could be problematic for the Crimean economy, if they're in legal limbo nobody except Russia will invest there and there might be import/export issues. Trade and investment require some sort of legal stability. As for the passports, I don't know, there might be problems when travelling outside Russia I guess, maybe not. There might be problems for non-Russians travelling to Crimea too, depending on how the visa stuff works. At last it leaves a lot of stuff unclear for now, which is not a good prospect, as people don't like doing business or spending money without some (legal) safety. Will be interesting too to see if Belarus and Kazakhstan accept this expansion of their customs union with Russia without being asked.