Russia considers bill calling German unification 'annexation'

The proposal is an attempt to justify Russia's annexation of Crimea.

   MOSCOW, Jan. 28 (UPI) --- The Russian parliament is considering a denunciation of Germany's 1990 unification as an illegal territorial grab of East Germany by West Germany.

   The move is an attempt to justify Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

   "Unlike Crimea, a referendum was not conducted in the German Democratic Republic," Communist Party legislator Nikolai Ivanov, said, referring to East Germany by its official name. Ivanov introduced the bill in the Parliament's lower house, the State Duma. He said he was not sure how his bill, now being studied by the Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, will fare, but added he was confident he had the "moral support" of his legislative colleagues.

   Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, a crucial party in Germany's unification, was critical of Ivanov's legislation, telling Russia's Interfax news agency the idea was "rubbish."

   "You cannot evaluate the events that took place in a different epoch, in different times from today's positions. What referendum could they launch in the German Democratic Republic when in both states, in the East and in the West, they held rallies with hundreds of thousands of participants under just one slogan, 'We are one nation!' What sort of annexation is this? The suggestion is simply rubbish. I will say this again: We cannot simplify the situation to the convenience of today's needs, and our appraisal of the past should not be based on today's views."