Russia, the Right to Self-Determination and Annexation
Year: 2021

Abstract Chapter 4 is the last of three chapters analysing Russia’s post-Soviet state practice with regard to the right to self-determination. It shows how Russia (ab)used the right of peoples to self-determination as a pretext to justify territorial acquisitions by the threat and use of force, in particular in the context of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, but also in its retrospect evaluation of the Soviet Union’s annexation of the Baltic states in 1940. Apart from a ‘referendum’, Russi