the State Duma, the Russian parliament's lower house, unanimously approved, in the first reading, the bill on the imposition of Russian criminal law and criminal procedure upon the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia provinces of Ukraine (hereinafter, the Bill). The Bill's temporal scope covers acts committed until 30 September 2022, i.e. the date when Russia attempted to illegally annex these territories. To become law, the Bill shall be approved in a second and third reading by the

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... e Duma, then approved by the Federation Council and finally signed by the President. Whereas the Bill is extremely problematic in several respects, my blog post focuses on Article 2(2), which reads as follows: An act, the responsibility for which is established by the legal acts of Ukraine, shall not be criminal and punishable if it contains elements of a crime provided for by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, but was aimed at protecting the interests of the Russian Federation, the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic or the legally protected interests of citizens or organisations of the Russian Federation, the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic, the population and organisations of the Zaporizhzhia province, the Kherson province.