Ukraine – Russia, the ambiguity of the Russian laws on the four attached regions: a escapade for negotiations?

By our correspondent
Moscow – « I am sure that the decision to bring the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk into the Russian Federation, the regions of Zaporizhzia and Kherson will be supported by all our people, because it is the will expressed by millions of people ».

That of September 30, 2022 was one of Vladimir Putin’s hardest speeches, which everyone remembers for a veiled nuclear threat. It was the party for theannexation of the Ukrainian territories where in the previous days he had been held A referendum called « a farce » both by Kiev and international observers. But if nothing else, since then at least one thing has always seemed clear, in the perennial Russian mystery. Those regions, which constituted fifteen percent of the Ukrainian territory and where as they were still fought today, would never go back. The hasty annexation had in fact transformed into an inalienable heritage. The Russian Constitution, reformed specifically in 2020, prohibits the transfer of the territories that are part of the nation, preventing anyone, also to the president in office, to deprive them.

It was one of the few firm points of these difficult negotiations, as well as one of the main obstacles to the hope of a just peace. It is still, but it could be in less categorical terms than we have always told. Dmitry Peskov himself had also suggested that the territories were not a taboo. Questioned in this regard, the Cremlin spokesman has always responded in a Sibillino way that « The border will be where there will be a border ». In fact, the univocal interpretation given in the West is not such in Moscow, where many jurists and professionals who support as « the territories » are not a problem. At least, not the biggest. And in doing so, they invite you to look at what happened after that speech with such peremptory tones.

The establishment of Russia limited itself to implementing the names of the four new subjects included in the Federation. But the boundaries did not sanction. The question was resolved on 4 October by four special federal constitutional laws. Each contains the same article that defines the limits of the territory of the new subjects, « republics » in the case of Donetsk and Lugansk and « Regions » in the case of Kherson and Zaporizhzia, from the borders present on the day of their training and the day of their adoption by the Russian Federation. AND such a vague definition that seems made on purpose. A way to leave a way out if things had not been fine for Putin’s army. In that September 2022, according to the estimates of military experts, Russia almost completely controlled the People’s Republic of Lugansk, sixty percent of the People’s Republic of Donetsk, and 75% and 89% of Zaporizhzia and Kherson, and the last two percentages today appear to be changed in favor of Kiev.

The interpretation is not univocal, not even in Russia. But some argue that according to the definition just reported, the boundaries of the so -called ninety, definition that indicates the four new territories, are those of the day of their entry into the Federation, and not those of their administrative entirety established by Ukraine legislation. It is not a question of goat wool, because from this « negotiability » of the four new provinces, an important part of the success of peace negotiations could pass. The doubt is there, and it applies to each of the territories. Also for the two « republics » who in 2014 had equipped themselves with their constitution, which assigned them the boundaries preceding the first Russian invasion, or the whole region. But the latest version of the card of both, drawn up in December 2022, therefore after their entry into the Federation, assimilates and reproduces the lack of unequivocal clarity of the text of the Russian Federal Constitutional Law: « The boundaries are established on the day of its training and the day of its acceptance in the federation of the new subject ».

Ambiguity on the four regions torn from Ukraine in fact exists. The boundaries « that existed at the day of acceptance in the Russian Federation » reported to October 2022, or the day when the regions were still formed in the USSR and then moved on to Ukraine when it became independent? It seems difficult to imagine that the Kremlin can accept a border defined by the front line. But it is to be wondered whether this indeterminacy may have also been conceived to become a compromise object in any negotiations, for Leave your hands free without betraying your Constitution. Jurists and insiders ask for it. The Russian media instead silent on this point. And this suggests that there really are no certainties.