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October 2, 2022

Russia just annexed four provinces previously considered part of Ukraine. Annexing the land of another country acquired by war is illegal according to international law… or so they say.

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But if the residents of such land decide by referendum to secede and declare independence, before being annexed by another country, such as what transpired with respect to Crimea in 2014 and now and the four eastern provinces formerly part of Ukraine, does this make the annexation legal?  Possibly.  It all depends if the residents had the right to secede and whether the referendum was properly executed.

Israel avoids this controversy by extending Israeli law to the land rather than annexing it.

Crimea and the four provinces

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In March 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea Peninsula, which had been a part of Ukraine since 1991 and now administers the territory as two federal entities — the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol.

Russia rejects the view that this was an annexation and regards it as an accession to the Russian and considers it secession as a result of irredentism. A term often used in Russia to describe these events is “re-unification” to highlight the fact that Crimea was a part of the Russian Empire from 1783 to 1917, and part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1921 to 1954. Few states recognize this view.

Ukraine considers Crimea and Sevastopol its own territory.

It should be noted that Crimea differs from the four provinces in that:

The new Constitution of Ukraine, the Crimea was declared to be the “Autonomous Republic of Crimea”, but also an “inseparable constituent part of Ukraine”. Being an “autonomous republic” it could be argued that it had the right to secede which it purported to do.

Irredentism is the doctrine of political or popular movements that claim and seek to occupy (usually on behalf of their members’ nation) territory considered “lost” (or “unredeemed”) to the nation, based on history or legend. The scope is occasionally subject to disputes about underlying claims of expansionism, owing to lack of clarity on the historical bounds of putative nations or peoples.