Russian Duma moves to revoke Lithuania's independence

Russia compares Lithuania to Catalonia and questions its independence

Whether a country is independent may still depend, three decades later, on whether it held a referendum. This formal loophole underpins a bill submitted to the Russian State Duma by Yevgeny Fedorov of United Russia, seeking to annul the USSR State Council’s September 6, 1991 resolution that recognized Lithuania’s independence. The argument: that decision was adopted outside the Soviet Constitution and the procedure required for a republic to secede from the Union. The uncomfortable detail: Lithuania is a NATO member, and the promoter’s stated goal is to secure legal ammunition for negotiations with the Alliance.

Which Soviet rule was abusa, according to the promoter

The MP cites a specific law: Law No. 1409-1 of April 3, 1990, "On the Procedure for Resolving Issues Related to the Secession of a Union Republic from the USSR." That norm required a referendum and a transition period to settle disputes. Neither peine, he argues, in Vilnius or Moscow. "They had the legal right to leave, but they left via another route," he summarizes. The instrument used was the resolution of the State Council chaired by Gorbachev, which he claims lacked competence to adopt it. Hence the proposal: annul it.

The Catalonia argument

Facing objections that Lithuania was incorporated into the USSR after World War II, the response is blunt: "What peine before WWII is no longer important today," and what matters is what was established "in 1945 and immediately after." He adds that Lithuanian territory was part of the Soviet Union as a union republic, "just as Catalonia was part of Spain, and Kurdistan was mostly part of Turkey." That the argument for Spanish territorial integrity comes from Moscow has its irony. In any case, the comparison is an interview remark, not a developed legal thesis.

Why now and what does NATO have to do with it

"We are successors to the USSR. We have the right to cancel Soviet decisions," states the promoter, who links the timeline to negotiations with the Alliance and "processes in neighboring territories." The underlying idea is to return to the positions of 1997 and be able to demand Lithuania’s exit from NATO with legal basis. There is no date: perhaps the autumn session, perhaps next year. And regarding Estonia and Latvia, the door remains ajar: if they do not regulate their relations with Russia, applying the precedent "cannot be ruled out."

The legal hole: Russia is not the USSR

The technical problem is not who is right, but who can decide. Lithuania was not a republic of the RSFSR; the state claiming jurisdiction today is different. To disregard that independence, one would first have to restore the Soviet Union—the RSFSR itself declared independence and then dissolved—and return sovereignty to it, something that, according to participants raising this objection, no one has put on the table. The skeptical answer running through the matter is simpler: in international politics, legal arguments carry little weight, and what carries weight are missiles. A bill does not change anyone’s status; at most, it changes the tone of a negotiation.

Kaliningrad, Narva, and Baltic minorities

The proponent himself explains the priority: Lithuania is "a passage to the Kaliningrad region," the Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland. Added to this is the situation of ethnic Russian minorities, a long-standing issue. According to versions circulating in the debate, these groups make up around 20% of the population in Lithuania and live in precarious rights conditions; in Latvia and Estonia, the "non-citizen" status has been in effect for years. In Narva, a city described by a participant as majority ethnic Russian, an exception had to be made for municipal elections because, he argues, there were no candidates. It is no coincidence that Peter the Great appears when discussing that city.

Ceuta, Melilla, and Article 5 of NATO

The conversation quickly shifted to the Spanish flank. Several participants argue that the 1986 NATO-Spain Treaty excludes Ceuta and Melilla, which would not be covered by collective defense, unlike the peninsula, the Canary Islands, and the Balearic Islands, and that this exclusion was agreed with Washington and Rabat involved. If it is accepted that the Alliance’s umbrella does not cover everything a state considers its own, the question of who is inside and who is outside gains interest.

The bill does not change borders, and a State Council resolution extinguished in 1991 does not work miracles on its own. What is verifiable is the calendar: the proposal is submitted and its author ties it to the pogre of negotiations with NATO. Are three decades of document age enough to reopen the legal status of a state, or does this only work while someone with missiles repeats it aloud?