Editorial Comment: The Annexation of Crimea: Russia, Passportisation and the Protection of Nationals Revisited

In 2010, I co-edited a book with Christopher Waters on the August 2008 Russia–Georgia confl ict.1 My own chapter contribution to that collection considered the Russian claim of self-defence, on the basis that it was protecting its nationals within Georgia.2 Like most commentators, I strongly criticised that claim, although I did so not because of a wholesale rejection of the right of self-defence being extended to protect nationals abroad—something that I tentatively subscribe to, subject to stringent conditions—but because of the application of that extension of the right by Russia in relation to its intervention into the territory of a neighbouring sovereign state. Most importantly, the use of force by Russia was clearly disproportionate to any attacks (actual and threatened) against Russian citizens in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia.3 It will be recalled that the August 2008 intervention was not limited to the South Ossetia region, but went well beyond into Abkhazia (another breakaway region) and Georgia proper. Th e patent disproportionality of the action in itself undoubtedly meant that the Russian use of force was not a lawful act of self-defence. Nonetheless, I spent as much of my chapter discussing another key aspect of the Russian claim to be protecting its nationals in Georgia: its policy of ‘passportisation’. Th e widespread distribution of Russian passports, especially to Ossetian residents, meant that Russia was able to ‘manufacture’ a population of nationals in Georgia that it then claimed to be defending.4 Leaving aside the 500 or so Russian peacekeepers in Georgia in 2008, the vast majority of the