Beyond International Law – The Soviet Donation of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 – Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond

By Peter Reinert – May 22, 2022

The 1954 donation of Crimea to Ukraine at no point respected the obligations of international law and is therefore legally worthless. After its secession from the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian state took over the authoritarian legacy and made itself the illegitimate owner of the peninsula. Since then, the population fought for their independence and statehood, until joining the Russian Federation.
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This article from the German language DE-RT website was translated by the New Cold War editorial team with written permission from the publisher.

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The Crimean peninsula also played a role in the first rounds of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. Moscow demanded that Kyiv recognize Crimea as a member of the Russian Federation. However, Kyiv categorically refused to cede any territory to Ukraine. At the end of March, President Vladimir Zelensky declared that the results of negotiations and territorial issues can only be decided by a national referendum. Does this apply to the Crimean peninsula?

The Crimean Question and International Law
Why is Crimea actually part of Ukraine? Hasn’t she always belonged to Russia? For over 250 years? Yes, but in 1954 the General Secretary of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev, handed over a part of Russian sovereign territory to the state of Ukraine: Crimea.

On February 29, 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decreed the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine. Was that a legitimate act under international law? Can the head of state of one country donate part of the sovereign territory to the head of state of another country?

Can you give away a territory just like that?
According to what principles of international law did Khrushchev “hand over” Crimea? Did the citizens of the peninsula then vote on whether they agreed to secede from Russia and become part of the Ukrainian state? Did they then declare Crimea an independent state whose citizens applied for union with Ukraine? – Nothing like that happened!

According to international law, a population must at least declare its independence and carry out a referendum in order to separate from an existing national territory (or from a federation of states). But here the right to self-determination of peoples is in conflict with the right to indivisibility of sovereign national territory. Thus:

“According to International Law Chapter 1, Article 2 and Chapter 6, Articles 73 and 73/b, the will of the peoples prevails over the political interests of the State or States.”

Crimea’s struggle for independence from Ukraine
The connection of Crimea to Ukraine, which is contrary to international law and does not take into account the will of the population, justifies the concept of forced integration into this state. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this has sparked a permanent and steadily escalating dispute between Ukraine and Crimea, with the latter striving to change the steps for detachment from Ukraine and reconnection with the Russian Federation while recognizing independence. The country prepared for this goal with several steps under international law:

The January 20, 1991, referendum for an autonomous republic in the Union of States of the Soviet Union
This Referendum by the people of Crimea formally ended the stage of the illegal donation situation to Ukraine because its weight under international law eliminates an arbitrary administrative act. This process also makes it clear that the Crimean population has wanted to break out of forced integration into Ukraine for a long time.

In 1992 Crimea adopted a statehood constitution
Due to pressure from Ukraine, however, this constitution had to be revoked a little later. As a compromise solution, Crimea was then given the status of the only autonomous republic within the Ukrainian state. This autonomy status was understood by the Crimean population as extensive sovereignty. In the years that followed, there were several conflicts over the design of the autonomy status with Kyiv, during which the inhabitants of the peninsula again demanded the 1992 constitution and thus independence. The Crimean population resisted being forced to submit to the Ukrainian judiciary and demanded recognition of their own elections.

Map of the Crimean Peninsula. PANONIAN, CC0

In 1994, Crimea voted in a referendum in favor of extended autonomy and the 1992 constitution
The government and parliament in Kyiv have always declared such steps to be unconstitutional and have also threatened to withdraw autonomy status. Nevertheless, a few days ago, the current President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, pointed out that Crimea had an autonomous status.

In 2014, 96.77 percent of the Crimean population voted against remaining in Ukraine and in favor of integration into the Russian Federation
The overwhelming result is an expression of many years of non-violent struggle by the people of Crimea for their independence from Ukraine, for their autonomy and statehood. The history of their resistance is proof that the referendum came about independently of any Russian or other outside influence.

Ukraine also used the referendum instrument to secede from the Soviet Union
On December 1, 1991, eleven months after Crimea’s first referendum, Ukraine held its own referendum on secession from the Soviet Union. This makes it clear that Ukraine would use the international legal significance of a referendum for territorial detachment as an instrument for itself, if this suited its interests. The previous – unilateral – declaration of independence and this referendum by Ukraine meant the largest territorial secession in the history of Eastern Europe and the de facto dissolution of the Soviet Union, whose constitution Kyiv deliberately broke during this process. The modern state foundation of Ukraine is thus based on a legal method that Crimea has been denied to this day.

Since Ukraine used a declaration of independence and a referendum as a legal and legitimate tool for its own secession from the then central state (the Soviet Union) without its consent, it has to accept the same procedure for the independence of Crimea – according to international law.

No customary international law
Due to Crimea’s numerous attempts at independence from Ukraine since 1991, it has not been possible for customary international law to develop in the sense of the factual conditions accepted by both sides. Customary law could have justified Ukraine’s present territorial claim from this point of view. The same reasons certainly apply to the years the Crimean population “held its ground” during the Soviet era as in the case of Ukraine itself, which only enforced its secession with a referendum eleven months after Crimea. Ukraine would certainly not have accepted customary international law for its membership of the Soviet Union, nor would it have renounced its secession.

The Unilateral Declaration of Independence in International Law
On March 11, 2014, the elected parliament of the peninsula proclaimed the Republic of Crimea as a sovereign state independent of Ukraine and again voted for its own constitution – without the permission of the central government in Kyiv. A referendum was held on March 19. In doing so, the Crimean people realized the collective desire for statehood already expressed in their 1992 constitution. At the time of the declaration of independence, a state infrastructure had already existed for over 20 years.

However, the central government in Kyiv that existed at that time had not been legitimized by democratic elections, but had come to power through a violent coup. In this respect, the institutions of Crimea did not have a legal interlocutor in the role of the central government at this historic moment.

The Kosovo precedent
The unilateral declaration of independence without the consent of the central government is a contentious issue in international law. However, the critical opinion of the International Court of Justice in The Hague of July 22, 2010 on Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence set a precedent that opened the door to imitations. Moreover, if more than 80 states, based on political interests, recognized the unilateral secession of Kosovo – which rested on far less solid historical foundations than those of Crimea – then they also created a legitimacy for Crimea and other secessions in the world. There are no two sets of standards for the same subject in international law.

The accusation that Russia “annexed” Crimea was and is false
A declaration of independence, a referendum, secession and entry into a state union occurred in Crimea. This excludes an annexation, which only exists in the case of a land grab by a foreign state carried out by military force. Even if the elected government of Crimea acted illegally in 2014 (against Ukraine’s constitution), this does not result in an annexation according to international law, which the West has categorically blamed on Russia ever since. The breach of the constitution, however, is quite equal to that of Ukraine during its secession and re-establishment.

The Russian military presence outside the leased naval port of Sevastopol on the days of the referendum

Quote: “The coercive effect of the Russian military presence referred neither to the declaration of independence nor to the subsequent referendum. It ensured the possibility of these events taking place, the outcome of which did not and had no influence. The addressees of the threat of violence were not the citizens or the parliament of Crimea, but the soldiers of the Ukrainian army. That is why the Russian armed forces blocked the Ukrainian barracks and not the polling stations, for example. What was thus prevented was military intervention by the central state to stop the Secession.”

This approach does not justify the concept of annexation. In no case were there acts of violence between the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. It should be noted that of the 18,000 Ukrainian soldiers stationed in Crimea during the secession process, 13,500 joined the Russian army and only 4,500 took advantage of their safe conduct to Ukraine.

Conclusions
All legal and political factors point in the same direction: according to the standards of international law, the Crimean peninsula was not part of the territory of Ukraine. Under international law, the Soviet donation of Crimea to Ukraine was an illegal act — there is no questioning that.

The western world, which denounced the system of the Soviet Union for decades during the Cold War, has studiously failed to this day to correctly assess such ideologically motivated relics as the Crimean Donation after its dissolution and accordingly to declare them illegal. When it comes to pass, as in this case, the Soviet Union is later credited with acting in accordance with international law.

All in all, the people of Crimea and their state institutions have fulfilled the prescribed conditions of international law for their independence from Ukraine – although they were not required to do so. Because this independence has lasted for centuries and was not interrupted or changed by political sham sales. All experts in international law know this – in Kyiv, Berlin, Brussels and Washington.

The West produced on this basis a gigantic political and historical falsification for a misinformed world that is now part of a war.

As such, Ukraine cannot give up part of its territory that never belonged to it, nor does it have any legal relevance whether it recognizes Crimea’s independence and entry into the Russian Federation. However, this admission would be of enormous political significance in order to take the wind out of the sails of the anti-Russian hate preachers.

(New Cold War)