Being an “autonomous republic” it could be argued that it had the right to secede which it purported to do.”

“In the new Constitution of Ukraine, the Crimea was declared to be the “Autonomous Republic of Crimea”, but also an “inseparable constituent part of Ukraine”. It should be noted that Crimea differs from the four provinces in that: Ukraine considers Crimea and Sevastopol to be its own territory. 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. Russia rejects the view that this was an annexation and regards it as an accession to Russian and considers it secession as a result of irredentism. 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. Israel avoids this controversy by extending Israeli law to the land rather than annexing it. It all depends if the residents had the right to secede and whether the referendum was properly executed. Annexing the land of another country acquired by war is illegal according to international law… or so they say.īut 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. Russia just annexed four provinces previously considered part of Ukraine.

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