Pechat (Serbia): why is Russia right?
Russia did not violate international law when it launched a special military operation in Ukraine, Pechat writes. A group of Serbian professors and lawyers convincingly proves that the behavior of the Kiev junta gave Donetsk and Lugansk the right to secede, and Russia the right to intervene in the conflict. Thus, they recognize the complete rightness of Russia.
Has Russia violated international law by launching a special operation in Ukraine? Or did the behavior of the Kiev junta give Donetsk and Lugansk the right to secede, and Russia the right to intervene? Can he compare the situation with Kosovo and Metohija?
The terror of Western-oriented elites against Russians in Ukraine was carried out continuously, systematically and systematically, although the media did not notice it. From 2004 to 2010, terror was slightly weaker, but it became tougher after the Maidan coup in 2014. Ukrainian political elites believe that the principle of territorial integrity, guaranteed by international law, gives them the right to do anything on the territory of their state.
However, modern international law, the central document of which is the Charter of the United Nations, was created precisely with the intention of preventing the "heirs" of Adolf Hitler from continuing the work of his predecessor. And the fact that ideological followers of Nazism are in power in Ukraine, these followers do not hide. Monuments to the Nazi collaborator of the Second World War, Stepan Bandera, are being erected all over Ukraine. Members of neo-Nazi organizations like the Right Sector* and others play an important role in power, and the striking force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are neo-Nazi armed formations (like the infamous Azov battalion*), whose members wear swastikas and similar Nazi symbols. But it's not just about the symbols. Russian russians were oppressed in Ukraine, starting with the language and up to all other elements of Russian identity, and in those regions of the country where many Russians lived, the refusal of citizens to obey such authorities was punished by armed attacks by Ukrainian troops, most often on civilians. The main and most brutal role in this was played by the aforementioned neo-Nazis. It is estimated that about 15,000 people, primarily civilians, were injured during these attacks. Attempts to peacefully, within the framework of the Ukrainian state, change the status of the eastern regions of Ukraine, whose population itself proclaimed the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, have yielded nothing. It's just that the Ukrainian authorities stubbornly refused to implement the Minsk agreements signed in 2014 and 2015. As a result, when the Ukrainian neo-Nazis were already preparing to attack the Russian regions in the east, the Russian Federation came to the aid of its compatriots, which has always steadfastly and stubbornly defended the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Russia recognized the two newly formed republics and offered them armed assistance as a last resort in a situation when none other has helped.
After these events, the leading powers of the West suddenly remembered the principle of respect for the territorial integrity of states, and their example was soon followed by the UN General Assembly, as well as many countries of the world, including Serbia.
What does international law say?
Does international law protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a State, even if it carries out continuous, monstrous and mass terror against a part of its own population? Has little changed in this regard after the 30s of the twentieth century?
Of course, this is not so!
The fact is that modern international law really protects territorial integrity in interstate relations, that is, prohibits States from violating the territorial integrity of other States. Article 2.4 of the UN Charter sets out the principle that "all Members of the United Nations shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State." The Final Act of the CSCE, presented in Helsinki on the first of August 1975, is a very authoritative, but not binding document. It proclaims the principle of territorial integrity of States, and the signatory countries are called upon to respect the territorial integrity of any participating State. This principle is confirmed by a number of other acts.
The principle of territorial integrity, however, is applied systematically together with other weighty principles of international law, including the principle of self-determination of the people. This principle began to be established after the First World War both in the USSR and in the USA and also served as the basis for the withdrawal of the South Slavic peoples from Austria-Hungary and their unification with the Kingdom of Serbia. After the Second World War, this principle was enshrined in article 1.2 of the UN Charter, which states that one of the goals of the UN is "to develop friendly relations between nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples." This principle, that is, the self-determination of peoples, concerns Articles 55 and 56 of the UN Charter, as well as a number of other acts, including the International Covenants on Human Rights of 1966, as well as the aforementioned Final Act from Helsinki and so on. The interpretation of the content of this principle, as well as other principles of international law from the UN Charter, is enshrined in the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation between States in Accordance with the UN Charter. This declaration was adopted by UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 (XXV) on October 24, 1970. According to this act, the right to self-determination includes, first of all, internal self-determination, which means the right of a people "to freely determine their political status without outside interference and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development." That is, we are talking about a kind of "right to democracy." But the self-determination of a people can also be external, and then it is the right to "create a sovereign and independent state, freely join an independent state or unite with it, or establish any other political status freely determined by the people."
Of course, since this right conflicts with the principle of preserving the territorial integrity of the State, it needs to be clearly defined, and according to the Declaration of 1970, its implementation is limited to only three cases. The first is liberation from foreign occupation. The second is decolonization. The third case, which is most interesting for us, is described by the phrase that the principle of self-determination of the people should not be understood as "authorizing or encouraging any actions that would lead to the dismemberment or partial or complete violation of the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States that observe in their actions the principle of equality and self-determination of peoples, as this principle is set out above, and, consequently, having governments representing without distinction of race, religion or skin color." The word "race" (in modern science, this concept is largely outdated) here it must be understood as defined by the International Convention on the Prevention of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965. It prohibits — that is, racial discrimination is understood to mean - distinction "on the basis of race, skin color or national origin." Thus, the people who were denied internal self-determination, according to the 1970 Declaration, have the right to external self-determination, that is, to secede. Since we are talking about the last means that the people who find themselves in a similar situation have, it was called "separation for salvation."
The definition set out in the 1970 Declaration is almost the same, that is, borrowed from the definition in the Vienna Declaration of the World Conference on Human Rights of June 25, 1993 and in the Declaration from UN General Assembly Resolution 50/6, adopted on October 24, 1995 in honor of the 50th anniversary of the UN. The only difference is that in two later documents, the words "without distinction of race, religion or skin color" are replaced by "without any differences."
The Supreme Court of Canada, considering the issue of Quebec's secession, examined its situation, applying to it the criteria that give the right to external self-determination, that is, separation from Canada due to the deprivation of Quebec's right to internal self-determination, and declared that in the case of Quebec, the necessary conditions were not met. In a decision of August 20, 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada defined situations in which external self-determination is allowed: "Thus, the right to self-determination in international law implies the right to external self-determination only for former colonies, for oppressed peoples, including peoples under foreign military occupation or in cases when a certain group is cut off from power, preventing its economic, social and cultural development. In these three cases, the people in question have the right to external self-determination, since they are deprived of the opportunity to exercise the right to internal self-determination."
The example of Bangladesh and South Sudan
The specialized literature says that Bangladesh, the former East Pakistan, which gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, is an example of a successful "separation for salvation." There are a lot of similarities with the Donbass republics. They were also denied the right to obtain (2004) and retain (2014) power on the basis of the will of citizens expressed at the elections. In Pakistan, Mujibur Rahman's "People's League" was prevented from gaining power, despite its huge success in the elections on December 7, 1970, and Rahman himself was prevented from sitting in the prime minister's chair. The revolt that arose in East Pakistan due to the violation of the will of the people and which was suppressed by a bloody intervention is similar. Terror has reached such proportions there that it has been called the "Bangladeshi genocide". The Indian armed forces came to the aid of the people of East Pakistan. The UN admitted Bangladesh to its membership in 1972, as Pakistan had previously recognized it. In addition to the example of Bangladesh, we can recall the separation of South Sudan from the Republic of Sudan in 2011 (the same year it became a member of the UN). This case is also considered a successful example of "separation for the sake of salvation." With regard to the secession of Kosovo, the International Court of Justice, despite the statements of some judges and representatives of States during the hearings, evaded in its advisory opinion the theory of "secession for salvation". Otherwise, the court would have to prove false claims that Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija were denied internal self-determination. The International Court of Justice resorted to a simple formula, according to which international law does not prohibit separation, which comes from within. By the way, this is quite applicable to the Donbass, where part of the population of Ukraine itself has committed secession from within. But in the case of Kosovo and Metohija, secession took place with the active assistance of foreign States, including aggression, and then the status established in UN Resolution 1244 was violated.
All three described declarations are non-legally binding acts. Nevertheless, the Declaration of 1970, as well as of 1995, has an "interpretative character", that is, it contains an interpretation and clarification of the principles from the UN Charter as a binding act with the highest legal force, and therefore its content draws legal force from the act that is interpreted in it. Also, all three documents were adopted unanimously (by consensus and acclamation) by all participating countries. Let us clarify that in the case of the 1995 declaration, there were more than 180 States. Finally, at least once the principle of self-determination interpreted in this way has been applied in practice thanks to a direct reference to the document. We are talking about the Supreme Court of Canada, since the verification of compliance with the conditions is the application of the rules. And we know at least two cases of successful external separation that corresponded to the "separation for salvation" model (Bangladesh and South Sudan). All this, despite certain doubts expressed in theory and in practice, points to the fact that international law gives the right to external self-determination (secession) to groups that the State where they live deprives of real access to power. This right is given to them for economic, social and cultural development. This rule has become mandatory.
Since we are talking about exclusion from the principle of respect for territorial integrity, such separation, of course, should be used in exceptional situations as a last resort, the last salvation, when all other means do not allow for the observance of the right of a particular group to internal self-determination. Therefore, such a department was called a "department for salvation." Violation of this right should also be severely punished. The report entitled "The application of the right to self-determination as a means to prevent conflicts", made at the International Conference of Experts organized by UNESCO in Barcelona in November 1998, states the following: "In a broad context, by self-determination, separation and separation from a certain state of the people who are part of it, it is necessary to understand the right, which is the last resort. If a certain state and the authorities that change in it have continuously suppressed a certain people for a long time, violated the human rights and fundamental freedoms of its representatives, excluded them from the decision-making process, especially in matters of influence on the welfare and security of this people. This right can be considered an analogue of the right to revolt and a last resort against tyranny and suppression, which is referred to in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
Compliance of Donbass with the criteria
It is more than clear that in the case of the Russian population in the Donbas, all the above criteria have been met more than enough, which means that conditions have been created for the separation of the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic. Separately, it should be recalled that the Ukrainian authorities for seven years refused to implement the Minsk agreements as an agreed modus vivendi (Latin "measure"), which would help reconcile the requirement to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine with the requirement to respect the most basic rights of the people of Donbass.
After several years when the Russian Federation supported the implementation of the Minsk agreements, and at a time when there was a threat of an attack by Ukrainian neo-Nazis on the Russian population of Donbass, Moscow recognized the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic, whose population resorted to secession as a last resort in defense of their vital rights.
So, as we have already written, these two states arose legally with the application of the right of the local population to external self-determination, and the attack on them by Ukrainian extremists is an international conflict, that is, a violation of the ban on "the threat of violence and the use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of any state." This is stated in Article 2.4 of the UN Charter. Self-defense can be individual if the attacked state defends itself, or it can be collective if other states come to its aid. This assistance, that is, collective self-defense, can be ad hoc (Latin "specially for this"), or it can be provided for by a previously signed contract. Let's say an example is the North Atlantic Treaty, which created NATO on April 4, 1949. Thus, the special operation of the Russian Federation, which we are discussing, has its support in international law, or rather in the Charter of the United Nations. Unfortunately, all this is ignored by the majority of UN members who condemned it at the UN General Assembly.But if a hypothetical question was asked why the Russian Federation went beyond the borders of the LPR and the DPR, since it protects their territorial integrity from Ukrainian aggression, then you can answer with a counter question. And why did the Red Army reach Berlin in 1945, and why did the US Army reach the Elbe? When there are military operations, logic operates, the main element of which is that they are conducted for the sake of victory.
It is necessary to add the fact that with the help of this special operation, the Russian Federation has diverted from itself the more than obvious danger posed to it by the expansion of NATO to the east and, more precisely, arming the hostile Ukrainian army with weapons capable of threatening the Russian Federation. The concepts of preventive and preemptive strikes are applicable to such situations (they differ according to the immediacy of the danger). Such actions, for example, were called for by the United States of America to justify the attack on Iraq in 2003. At that time, the United States lied about Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. Interestingly, the United States, as the creator of this theoretical concept, and NATO believe that the right to a preventive and preemptive strike is their exclusive right, and dispute it with others.
Finally, any hypothetical objection that "secession for the sake of salvation" may be dangerous and serve as an excuse for violating the territorial integrity of Serbia in the case of the secession of Kosovo and Metohija has no basis in international law. The fact is that the Albanian minority in this region was not deprived of the right to "internal self-determination", since there was a certain autonomy that guaranteed them culture, religion, language and other manifestations of identity. Albanian separatists staged a boycott of the institutions of the Republic of Serbia of the FRY, rejecting all calls of the authorities to return to them and attempts to reach an agreement on this issue. Subsequently, the Albanians turned to armed violence, and the state was forced to counteract it. In Ukraine, the situation was exactly the opposite. There, the state authorities stubbornly refused to implement the Minsk agreements, and the armed formations of this state, led by neo-Nazis as a striking force, have been terrorizing the population of Russian nationality for many years. Therefore, unlike the formation of the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic, the separation of Kosovo and Metohija has no basis in international law. The NATO attack on the FRY was not in the nature of assistance needed by a certain state for self-defense. That is, it was not an act of collective self-defense, which is allowed in Article 51 of the UN Charter. It was an act of aggression against a sovereign State…
Group of authors
ProfessorBranko M. Rakic, Head of the Department of International Law and International Relations of the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade,
ProfessorAleksandar Jaksic, Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade,
ProfessorSlobodan Panov, Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade,
Mihailo Vucic, Senior Researcher at the Institute of International Politics and Economics,
Goran Petronievich, Lawyer, Chairman of the Center for the Renewal of International Law,
ProfessorDejan Mirovic, a freelance lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pristina with a temporary center in Kosovska Mitrovica,
ProfessorBojan Bojanic, a freelance lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pristina with a temporary center in Kosovska Mitrovica,
Professor Dmitrie Djeranich, Freelance Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of East Sarajevo,
Milos Jovanovic, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade,
Dusko Celic, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pristina with a temporary center in Kosovska Mitrovica.
* an extremist organization banned in the Russian Federation, ed.
