Crimea is actually not an island, but a peninsula connected to the country it legally belongs to (as recognized by most of the international community, including China).
Economically, Great Britain is orders of magnitude larger, and an independent country, not belonging to France or Ireland.
France did not invade it previously without provocation. Plenty of gaps in your parallelism.
Russia knows better than to directly attack a core infrastructure of the west.
I agree with you. I think it is a massive escalaation. But I wanted to ask what others thought without taintint their answers in my quesiton.
But it's not my comparison, it was from Maria Zakharova within the Russian foreign ministry, but not couched as a retaliation threat. I wanted to make the comparison more stark by couching it as a retaliation hypothesis.
Most of hers talking are made for Russian
Yes only 21 nations consider Crimea to be Russia.
Even more strongly is the rejection of the "sham" referendums in the Donbass regions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_ES-11/4
