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State Duma to send appeal to Russian president on recognizing Donetsk, Lugansk republics

The decision was supported by 351 lawmakers, with 16 votes against it and one abstention
Russian State Duma Anton Novoderzhkin/TASS
Russian State Duma
© Anton Novoderzhkin/TASS

MOSCOW, February 15. /TASS/. The State Duma approved a resolution at its session on Tuesday to forward to the Russian president a draft appeal by the lower house of Russia’s parliament as proposed by the Communist faction on recognizing the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR).

The decision was supported by 351 lawmakers, with 16 votes against it and one abstention. The State Duma rejected a competing draft resolution on forwarding the appeal to the Foreign Ministry for consultations. This motion gained only 310 votes during the ranked voting.

As Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin pointed out, the resolution "will be signed immediately and forwarded to the head of state." The politician wrote on his Telegram channel that the motion would be forwarded to the Russian leader "to consider the issue of recognizing the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic as self-sustained, sovereign and independent states."

"Kiev is not fulfilling the Minsk Agreements. Our citizens and compatriots living in Donbass need assistance and support," the State Duma speaker insisted.

As Volodin pointed out, the lawmakers are certain that "the recognition of the DPR and the LPR will create grounds for ensuring security guarantees and protecting residents of the republics from external threats, and also for bolstering international peace and regional stability in compliance with the goals and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations Organization and will pave the way for the process of recognizing both states internationally."

Appeal to Russian president

The draft appeal was submitted to the State Duma on January 19 by the faction of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). Under the document, the State Duma turns to the head of state with a request to consider recognizing the self-proclaimed republics "as self-sustained, sovereign and independent states."

It follows from the text of the document that the lawmakers "deem as substantiated and morally justified the recognition" of the DPR and the LPR.

"Over recent years, democratic bodies and states with all the attributes of legitimate power have been built in the republics based on the people’s free will," the document says.

The lawmakers deem it necessary to propose that the Russian president consider the issue of holding negotiations with the leaderships of the DPR and the LPR as soon as possible "for the purpose of creating a legal framework of inter-state relations to provide for the regulation of all the aspects of cooperation and mutual assistance, including security issues."

Polemics

The competing draft resolution worked out by the ruling United Russia party and rejected by the State Duma did not stipulate that the appeal would be forwarded to the head of state immediately after the completion of consultations with the Russian Foreign Ministry. This nuance caused disagreement among members of the KPRF faction. In particular, Faction First Deputy Head Nikolai Kolomeitsev argued that in this case the State Duma would have not given "the president additional trump cards." He further argued that such a resolution could have delayed the process of examining the appeal.

For his part, Head of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Ties with Compatriots and one of the authors of the document Leonid Kalashnikov (KPRF) pointed out that the appeal itself did not mean recognizing the republics. "Recognition or non-recognition is implemented by the president and this is solely his competence," the lawmaker stressed. He also said that "the possibility of the DPR and LPR leaders themselves turning to the president is also not ruled out."

"With regard to the issue of recognizing the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, the parliamentarians of all the factions demonstrated their unanimity," Deputy Head of the United Russia faction Yevgeny Revenko was quoted by the faction’s press office as saying. He pointed out that today’s resolution "is an open position of the country’s parliament and people on what is taking place in the southeast of Ukraine.".