The exact borders of the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia have not yet been determined, but it is already clear that President Vladimir Putin has established facts under current Russian law. return territories? In any case, a possible Putin successor cannot do so easily.
Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, Luhansk – these four Ukrainian regions have been part of Russia for about a month. At least that’s what the Kremlin claims after illegal referendums in the occupied territories. According to international law, however, the annexations of the Russian Federation are ineffective and illegal. No matter which way Russia turns, the annexed territories are still officially Ukrainian territory.
A month after the votes, it is still not clear which borders the four regions have according to the Russian interpretation. But one thing is clear: President Vladimir Putin has presumably created facts with the incorporations for years and decades, explains military expert Carlo Masala from the Bundeswehr University in Munich in the “Stern” podcast “Ukraine – the situation”. Accordingly, Putin binds “all generations of Russian politicians” to this territorial situation. “According to the Russian constitution, it is theoretically possible, but practically impossible to give away Russian territory.”
Sabine Fischer from the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) sees the illegal annexations as an “extreme act of imperialist aggression”. Peace negotiations with Russia under Putin are impossible. The incorporation of the Ukrainian territories means a “quantum leap away from a negotiated solution that would be acceptable to Ukraine,” Fischer wrote on Twitter.
The Russian Federation Council had unanimously approved the annexations of the four Ukrainian regions just a few days after Putin’s decision. The transition period until full integration into the Russian Federation is to last more than three years, until January 1, 2026. By then, the Russian authorities are to have started their work in the illegally annexed areas, laws are to be amended and all payment transactions are to be switched to rubles.
“These are actually very big chunks and stones that Putin is putting in the way of possible successors, because they are also associated with constitutional changes, because new federal subjects, i.e. new sub-areas, are being included in the Russian Federation from a Russian perspective,” analyzes Fabian Burkhardt in the ntv podcast “Learned something again”.
Burkhardt is a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, where he also works as an editor for the online journals “Russian Analysis” and “Ukraine Analysis”. And he is an expert when it comes to the constitution of the Russian Federation. “Federal subjects, that’s sort of what the federal states are in our country. And each individual federal subject is recorded in the constitution.”
Russia wants to make the citizens of the illegally annexed territories formally Russian citizens by 2026. And although Ukraine and the West will not recognize this, as long as Russia occupies the territories, the people of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk will probably have to abide by certain rules in order to be able to live in their homeland at all and not as foreigners apply in their own territory.
Carlo Masala expects Russia to try to replace the population in the occupied territories in the near future. “We’ve been seeing children being kidnapped to Russia for the first few weeks. It all boils down to a Russification of these areas,” said the military expert in the podcast “Ukraine – the situation”. “Of course, Russia has little interest” in the fact that many Ukrainians still live in the illegally annexed areas, and they continue to resist the Russian occupiers.” So the Ukrainians are being cleaned out of the regions so that Russians can settle there in the future.”
Moscow wants the regions to be represented in the Duma and the Federation Council. That means the regions must send politicians to the two chambers of the Russian parliament. These then actually participate in Russian legislation. As in the case of Crimea: the Ukrainian peninsula, annexed in violation of international law in 2014, is now also represented by members of parliament.
However, if one day Putin is no longer president and his successor then wants to return the illegally annexed areas of Ukraine, this would be legally complicated in view of the Russian constitution. “The longer the period in which Russia regards these areas as annexed and de facto controls at least parts of these Ukrainian areas, the more difficult it will be for any successor to reverse this,” Burkhardt makes clear. This is due to the large number of constitutional changes that would be necessary in this case.
Accordingly, Putin not only made his fate dependent on the course of the war, “but also that of his successor or of any new government that comes into office after him,” says Burkhardt in the podcast.
The annexations make it more difficult for Putin to one day come out of the war face-saving, analyzes Gwendolyn Sasse, director of the Center for East European and International Studies, in an ntv interview. Sasse does not want to “play down” the illegal annexations, but the incorporations are also “surprisingly vague” because it is not clear exactly which area Russia wants to occupy permanently. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said before the annexation ceremony in Moscow on September 30 that the border issue had yet to be “clarified”.
Nevertheless, Fabian Burkhardt is convinced that with the illegal annexations, Putin has created facts for a long time, at least in Russia, that make serious long-term peace negotiations impossible. Because even a possible successor in the Kremlin would have his hands tied. Give away Russian territory – that’s what Moscow declared the occupied areas to be? According to the Russian constitution, as of now, this is practically impossible.
