Politics of Crimea that annexed Crimea to the Russian Federation. While the Russian Federation both claims and administers the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol as two of its federal subjects, Ukraine continues to assert that Crimea is an integral part of its territory. The Constitution of the Republic of Crimea is the basic law of the Republic of Crimea within the Russian Federation. It was ratified on 11 April 2014 and replaced the previous Constitution of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea that was repealed by the Crimean status referendum. While the Russian constitution was updated to list the Republic of
Crimea by "the commonality of the economy, the proximity, and close economic and cultural relations between the Crimean region and the Ukrainian SSR". At that time no vote or referendum took place, and Crimean population had no say in the transfer (also typical of other Soviet border changes). After the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, doubts have been expressed - from the Russian side by all means, but even by Western historians (Richard Sakwa, "Frontline Ukraine. Crisis In the Borderlands", 2015) - about the very legitimacy of the 1954 transition of Crimea to Ukraine; in the critics' view the