Yes. Fortunately, the BBC sometimes (but not always) does some very good work. The BBC, The Guardian and the Russian outlet RT.com are among my main sources of information. I believe I need very different sources and points of view to get a balanced understanding of the situation.
If you use only Western news outlets, you might tragically fail to get a balanced view.
The overall principle here is very good for one particular use. Understanding what different audiences are being exposed to.
When it comes to understanding the truth about what's going on, there's likely a hidden assumption that's a bit deadly, though. Assuming that the claims of differing sides under different conditions and motivations are equally truthful is an exercise in gullibility, not understanding.
RT has a long history of being utterly untrustworthy, objectively. RT is state propaganda by nature. RT is further subject to Russia's deeply problematic laws restricting truthful publication about Russia's activities. BBC and the Guardian suffer from none of those problems. Putting RT on the same level as them is NOT actually a way to gain a balanced view. It's a path to gullibility.
What made the referendums legitimate wasn't that they were held strictly under Ukrainian law, but, rather, the fact they seemed to faithfully reflect the views of the people, as polled by international news organizations (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#Post-referendum_polls).
Again, it's plausible that they reflected the majority view of the people. However, the referendum itself was fundamentally a sham and cannot be treated with legitimacy. Further, the polling that you try use to back your position up is also tainted by Russia's tactics. Russia has a long history of going after dissenters (including via genocide - which Russia may well be doing in Crimea right now to the Tatars in particular), especially the dissenters of certain ethnic groups and on topics like, say, support for Crimea to stay part of Ukraine. They've created a general atmosphere where dissenters are far more likely not to express their opinions truthfully, especially not to some unknown stranger calling out of nowhere, than those who have nothing to fear by legitimately preferring Russia. Going a bit further than that, if that polling ended up showing that Crimeans didn't want to be part of Russia, what would the Crimeans expect Russia's response would be? Almost certainly suppression and genocide, given Russia's normal operation. So there's even more motivation to present a particular image, regardless of the truth. To express it slightly differently, what abused person would openly talk about being abused to someone who 1) might well be just another test by the abuser and 2) couldn't help them (but very much could hurt them if the abuser found out... and the abuser is guaranteed to find out to some extent in this case) anyways? A few would, but most likely wouldn't. That's before getting to those among them that have simply been silenced, potentially in a performative manner to scare the rest into submission.
Thus, the people of Crimea are in a situation where the claimed justification for their annexation into Russia was thoroughly illegitimate and where polling cannot be reasonably trusted. It's Russia that's removed all avenues of potential legitimacy from international consideration other than exerting Russian power to force the rest of the world to accept. That has nothing to do with the will of the Crimean people, though.
There's no path for the will of the Crimean people to matter at all while Russia is in power there. There is potential for Crimea to join Russia legitimately with international acceptance if and only if Crimea is truly free of Russia and the damage is undone.
The disagreement we are having on this is that your position is that the Crimeans are allowed to do whatever they want unilaterally, while the rest of us are saying that the Crimeans can only hold such a referendum under Ukrainian law, which this one wasn't.
As I've poked at, there's more to it than that. His position may be that the Crimeans are allowed to do whatever they want unilaterally, but we can't even trust that it's actually the will of the Crimean people, before getting to how it's illegitimate in every other way.
