Abstract
Crimea’s annexation by Russia violated a whole range of the fundamental principles of international law and international treaties guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the inviolability of its borders, and security. By annexing Crimea, Russia also violated the estoppel principle of law and international morality. In light of the principles of contemporary international law, as well as in light of the Russian doctrine of international law, the arguments put forward by Russia’s President Putin, Russian officials, and international lawyers are untenable and in contradiction of the previous Russian doctrine’s approach towards the relationship between the principles of self-determination and territorial integrity.
Highlights
Crimea’s annexation by Russia violated a whole range of the fundamental principles of international law and international treaties guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the inviolability of its borders, and security
In its Decision the Constitutional Court made reference to the 1970 Declarations of the Principles of International Law, maintaining that it followed from the Declaration that the right to self-determination should not be interpreted as authorizing or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent states conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples
In this respect the contemporary Russian doctrine of international law continues the infamous tradition of the Soviet doctrine of international law, which was nothing but a part of the state propaganda machine performing an ideological function in society and unscrupulously justifying such international crimes committed by the USSR as the invasions of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan in 1979, etc
Summary
The prevailing view in Russian doctrine of international law on the eve of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and Crimea’s annexation was that:. [T]he disintegration of the USSR has led to the emergence on its territory of the fifteen newly independent states, the former Soviet Republics, which undertook an obligation to recognize and respect the territorial integrity of each other and the inviolability of borders existing between them, which at the moment of the termination of the USSR’s existence were administrative borders of the Soviet Republics.. From the outset it should be noted that the USSR by its legal nature was a subject of international law, a federation, a rather specific kind of federation, as it was referred to in Soviet legal literature, a “soft federation.”.
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