MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian lawmakers have submitted a draft bill to the State Duma that would rewrite a chapter of history by nullifying the Soviet decision in 1954 to transfer Crimea from Russia to Ukraine.
The move appears aimed at establishing a legal basis for Russia to argue that Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which it claims to have annexed from Ukraine in 2014, was never really part of Ukraine to begin with.
The draft, submitted by a lawmaker from each of Russia’s two houses of parliament, describes the 1954 handover as arbitrary and illegal because no referendum was held and Soviet authorities had no right to transfer territory from one constituent republic to another without consent.
They are really trying to justify stealing that territory from Ukraine
My favorite part is Russia is trying to change legislation that a different country (the USSR) made, which affects a third country (Ukraine). This is some hardcore ‘throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks’ level of imperialism.
Edit: Fixed some wording.
Yup. It’s mental gymnastics at its finest.
Ans the cool part is, none of it matters because they are a one-party dictatorship and what the government/Putin says, goes. Nothing they say inside their own legal system has an iota of weight more than a micrometer past their borders- it exists purely for propaganda and to make it easier to legally disappear any dissenters.
Historically, Russia has never cared much for the written law. They’ll just throw shit at the Western wall until something sticks or until they get what they want by violence and intimidation. Same as they always have.
Any Lords of Sealand want to convince your peers to issue a law that what the USSR did was legal and that, in fact, Crimea was supposed to be interpreted as “everything west of the Urals”? Seems like it would hold about the same amount of water