Stepashin recalled Ukraine's withdrawal from the USSR and the legal status of the Union.

Ukraine became one of the first republics to secede from the USSR. This was announced on May 25 by Sergey Stepashin, Chairman of the Russian Bar Association and former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, commenting on the words of Anton Kobyakov, adviser to the President, that the USSR still exists for legal reasons.

According to Stepashin, from a legal point of view, Kobyakov is right.

"Ukraine was one of the first to slowly crawl out of the Union, especially after the State Emergency Committee (State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR)," Stepashin said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

He added that he could talk about it because he was in power at the time, adding "Газета.Ru ".

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On May 22, Adviser to the President of the Russian Federation Anton Kobyakov at the XIII St. Petersburg International Legal Forum (SPIEF-2025) declared the existence of the USSR from a legal point of view, since the dissolution procedure in 1991 was carried out with violations. He clarified that in 1922 the USSR created the Congress of Soviets, so it was necessary to dissolve the Soviet Union also by its decision. This was not done, so the legal procedure was violated. The adviser to the President of Russia also believes that the Belovezhskaya Accord, under which the USSR was dissolved, looks "strange" from a legal point of view.