RE: I don’t recall a legally equivalent basis for the independence of the USSR’s successor states, so the Ambassador is possibly technically correct.
Several things supersede any formal treaty signed
1) THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE LIVING IN THESE COUNTRIES. Do they WANT to be part of Russia or WANT to be under Russian dominance? If not, then their will supersedes any formal treaty.
2) ARE THESE NATIONS RECOGNIZED BY THE UNITED NATIONS AS INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES?
3) Worse comes to worst, Russia and its leaders ought to ask themselves— is it better to correct this legal oversight and formalize it? Or do they prefer to sacrifice hundreds of thousand more lives to force these nations back to Russian domination?
I believe this long sentence spells it out perfectly:
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
It seems to me an actual declaration of independence followed by a successful admission to the UN (which is the “among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station” clause) should be the formal recognition of that nation as a nation.
The will of the people is not the top priority there.
If the people are properly consulted and the declaration of independence is a majority view, OR the body it is seceding from accepts the division, then both sides agreed to the split and it becomes an established international fact. Good example: the separation of Czechoslovakia.
If countries that are quasi independent choose to leave a union that they helped to create, that is a legal process leading to a legal fact.
If all members of a union of nations agree to terminate the union or accept in writing that it has already been dissolved, that again becomes a legal fact.
The USSR was terminated by the joint decision of the leaders of Ukraine, Belarus’and Russia. It’s not open to renegotiation. No matter what the public majority position was, governments can choose to end the treaties signed by their predecessors.
A popular of less than 5000 Russian settlers and pro Russian separatists arbitrarily declared themselves the governments of the Donbas without consulting the settled population of the region. They’ve refused point blank to prove there was any wider mandate in any election. As long as Ukraine views it as an illegal takeover by less than 1% of the population, Ukraine technically is in the right.
Likewise, China refuses to accept the independence ambitions of Taiwan. But unlike the Donbas, Taiwan isn’t seceding because of a 1% minority hijacking the administration.