The international crisis in Ukraine took a new downturn on Thursday as regional MPs in the Crimean capital voted to petition Moscow for accession to Russia and brought forward a referendum on the issue to 16 March.
The legality of this vote is at best highly questionable: the region is under armed occupation, the Crimean prime minister was deposed when gunmen took over regional government buildings last week and, according to Chancellor Angela Merkel, the referendum is incompatible with Ukraine's constitution.
Such constitutional niceties will likely be swept aside by Moscow, however, and though it is not yet complete – a recent poll found only 41% of voters would like to see the peninsula join its powerful neighbour – it would seem an annexation is unfolding before our eyes.
President Vladimir Putin's denial at a press conference this week that the Kremlin wants to subsume the region looks increasingly like another untruth to add to the tottering pile of disingenuity he produced for the media.
There have been many attempts, apart from Mr Putin's, to muddy the water in which the Kremlin has moved.
The arguments deployed in this regard include asserting that the country has a right to intervene under a bilateral 1997 friendship treaty, that the peninsula was anyway part of Russia until 1954, that the takeover has been "bloodless" and therefore of little account, and that the west cannot lecture Russia because of the 2003 attack on Iraq.
Some of these assertions are useful context to the crisis and some are bogus. (Who could reasonably expect a US president to remain silent because his predecessor launched the deplorable Iraq war?)
Most importantly, none detracts from the central fact of Russia's illegal incursion into the territory of another UN member state.
Faced with this truth, the international community must respond, and the only question being deliberated in world capitals is how. The US on Thursday announced it would deny visas to those "responsible for, or complicit in, threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine".
EU government heads meanwhile decided to suspend talks on a more liberal visa regime.
These are at best tokens and are surely less than Mr Putin has already priced into the cost of taking Crimea.
Threats to Russia's international standing and boycotts of the G8 summit carry little more weight. The only measures Mr Putin is likely to view seriously will target Russia's economy and its energy exports, which are the source of much of the Russian leader's political credibility.
While talks continue, it is not yet time to impose economic sanctions on Russia. For US and EU negotiators to be taken seriously in coming days, however, Mr Putin must be persuaded they are an option.