MOSCOW, July 24 (AVN) - A group of deputies of the State Duma lower house of Russian parliament has drafted and submitted to the Duma council the bill "Concerning the Territorial Integrity of the Russian Federation."
The drafters group comprises 14 deputies including Vitaly Savostyanov, Valentin Chaika and Alexei Mitrofanov.
The need for the bill is caused by a number of interior and foreign factors, Chaika, deputy chairman of the State Duma defence committee, told the Military News Agency. Particularly, the Russian constitution does not contain regulations on the Armed Forces application in Russia's territory against an armed conflict of non-international nature which has the forms of an international mutiny or civil war aimed at violation and elimination of the country's territorial integrity and withdrawal from Russia against its constitution.
The constitution has no rules on the possibility and timeliness of the Russian president's actions to prevent such situations, as well as legal norms of handing or exchange of a part of Russia to a foreign country, though such facts took place in the past. Other problematic issues are not envisaged in the constitution either.
The drafting was sped up by the Constitutional Court's regulation on checking then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin'd decree on restoration of the constitutional order in Chechnya. The regulation passed on July 31, 1995, proposed the Federal Assembly upper house of Russian parliament to rectify the law on the Armed Forces application.
In accordance with the bill an armed conflict of non-international nature should be settled by diplomatic, judicial, legal and other measures without use of the Armed Forces.