Yevgueni Fiódorov, deputy of the State Duma (Lower House of the Russian parliament), surprised this Wednesday by presenting a bill to abolish the recognition of the independence of the former Soviet republic of Lithuania, which occurred more than three decades ago.
According to this legislator, the decree "will allow contesting Lithuania's membership" in NATO, because entities whose integrity is in the midst of a legal dispute cannot enter the Alliance. From the Kremlin, his spokesman Dimitri Peskov said he was unaware of this proposal.
Fyodorov believes that by recognizing the independence of this Baltic country, the law of the Soviet Union "on the procedure for resolving problems related to the exit of the Federal Republic" was violated, since in Lithuania "a referendum on the exit was not held of the USSR".
Russia is the successor to the USSR and, the politician argues, in accordance with the sixth paragraph of the North Atlantic Treaty, with which NATO was established in 1949, "the legal subjects in dispute cannot be in the Alliance."
On March 11, 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a law on changing the name of the Republic of Lithuania and issued a decree on restoring its independence, which it lost in 1940. On September 6, 1991, the Council of State of the USSR, chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev, recognized the independence of Lithuania. The country joined NATO and the European Union in 2004.
According to Fyodorov, the State Council's decision was illegal, "at least the USSR had no right to territorial integrity and to give away its territory. Considering that a referendum on the Constitution had been held, where we identified ourselves as the successors of the Soviet Union, now the questions of its territorial structure directly affect us. And we must bring order to the violations of the law that were committed even under Gorbachev," Fyodorov told the Gazeta.ru email.
