Well, maybe it was beforehand thought and counted only by who? Isn't it strange that Putin talks more than an hour with Obama over the phone in the dead of the night and on the next morning the mysterious "green men" hold the Crimean Parliament? Then Putin communicates with Merkel and Crimea decides to go for the referendum. Don't you think that the world leaders are fooling us?
Maybe they are trying to convince their peoples that the inevitable worsening of the economies of their countries is not the consequence of the next turn of the world financial crisis which they cannot cope with, but fault of Russia, a traditional scarecrow for the Westerners and let Russia keep Crimea as a moral compensation?