Framing yourself into a corner: Russia, Crimea, and the minimal action space

A long-held axiom, political leaders are said to favour an action space sufficiently wide to allow them, as a minimum, a face-saving exit. This makes it particularly interesting for us to study those rare cases where political leaders seem to be deliberately reducing their policy options to the point of having merely one line to pursue. The handling by Russian President Vladimir Putin of the early 2014 crisis over Crimea, eventually leading to the annexation by Russia of the Ukrainian Peninsula on 21 March 2014, seems to represent such a rare case. Through the use of state-controlled media, a highly dichotomized framing of the crisis was presented to the Russian audience, essentially leaving Putin with just the one option of acting to “save” the Crimeans from the Ukrainian Government by bringing them into Russia.