FAKE SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES AS THE INSTRUMENT OF RUSSIAN AGGRESSION

Abstract

The article exploring the main pseudo-legal justification for the covert and later open invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, the ‘protection of the will of the peoples of Ukraine’. This official position and propaganda thesis regarding the falsification of the ‘self-determination of the peoples of Ukraine’ could not be neglected as worthless and void because it is well-thought-out, aimed at leveling the efforts of Ukraine to gain international support in countering aggression, raising the objections of states, especially non-Western ones, and rejecting any international collective sanctions. The author shows that the Russian thesis is groundless because according to any international legal criterias there are no regional peoples in Ukraine that could have a right for self-determination, and the latter never occurred. The more difficult issue situated in the ‘gray zone’ of international law is a ‘remedial secession’, but even this ambiguous concept is inapplicable to Ukrainian realities because the state powers equally represent the population of the state and no repressive policy is implemented toward a group or a region.