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Comment by ga-vu | Hacker News Reader

No offence, but what did you expect.

Trying to secede in a country where secession is illegal, is... you know... a crime.

You can secede in federalist countries, but most republics prohibit secession -- since most of their constitutions are based on France's model.

So, a prison sentence was pretty clear for most political observers. The only way they wouldn't get prison terms was if the secession succeeded, which it did not.

Technically speaking, I'm surprised they weren't charged with treason -- the de-facto charge in such cases. Good thing the EU requires members to abandon the death penalty to join. Most high-level treason charges usually end up with a noose around someone's neck.

Also, please downvote me. Actual statement of facts aren't welcomed here.

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Please don't break the site guidelines. They ask you to post thoughtfully and substantively on divisive topics ("No offence, but what did you expect" is not). They also ask you not to downvote-bait. Would you mind reviewing them and sticking to the rules when posting here?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No one on this forum is saying that these things are lawful in Spain.

The more interesting and relevant question is whether it is right or wrong. The answer to that question is not automatically the same as lawful/unlawful. Even in a democracy.

Judges are not free to ignore the law just to appease complex political issues that have been fed for 20+ years, and can be backtracked to when Pujol came to power in Catalonia. So yes, judges did the right thing. Now it is up to the next president to manage the situation. But the news being discussed here is about politicians misusing funds to pursue their own agenda, and the penal consequences.

I won't claim you are doing this intentionally, but I find it strange that you care so much about being (in my opinion) rather pedantic in this way? Don't you think it's perfectly reasonable - as a bystander and not a member of the legal profession - to apply your imagination over what ought to be and not the semantics of what is? And to engage in a debate on that basis? Do you really think that whether or not judges are free to ignore precedent has any effect on how Catalans and Spaniards feel about this decision? Or am I missing the point of your comment?

Im not sure I follow you completely - particularly the precedent point, but ill try to explain myself:

There is a huge political context around this trial, and I believe that the fact that my parent post was arguing that we should discuss about morality, not just legality, is a way to introduce this context into the evaluation of the trial to assess - and condemn - the result. I think this is mis characterizing the quality of the trial itself. Plenty of people are decrying the trial result because they want independence, which to me is intellectually dishonest. I was thus arguing that the trial itself was right, responding to a direct ask to consider right vs wrong.

Neither are judges free to ignore the European Convention on Human Rights or the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights when interpreting and applying those national laws. Also, wouldn't be the first time Spain got slapped by ECtHR because of sentences based on its outdated Criminal Code.

>No offence, but what did you expect.

>Trying to secede in a country where secession is illegal, is... you know... a crime.

This tone is baffling to me. I don't think anybody is surprised that countries dislike secession.

>Also, please downvote me. Actual statement of facts aren't welcomed here.

I don't claim to speak for "here", but, personally, this pettiness at the end of your comment is what I'd like most to be absent from HN.

Ignoring the tone, people are demanding judges to ignore their duty, and the government to intervene in the judiciary system, so the two first quotes you pasted are actually contended points in parts of Spain.

Prosecuting the sessionist is a bad move by Spain regardless of the laws. Prosecution is always discretionary and what they're doing is just creating martyrs. Sessionists lost and Spain is the one being petty here. I predict I will see new life for this movement in my lifetime.

> Prosecution is always discretionary

Not at all, and failing to do so can be itself a crime.

You are patently wrong. In fact, it is part of DoJ policy to direct prosecutors to where they should allocate their limited resources. We had a very nice example of this when Obama's DoJ directed prosecutors to lower their priority on prosecuting Marijuana related crimes. Admittedly, some serious crimes will always be, and deservedly so, a high priority. But prosecutors still just work under the DoJ. And I suspect Spain has a similar hierchy.

> You are patently wrong.

Ironically, you are patently wrong.

As the other poster mentions, mandatory prosecution exists in many parts of the world, and Spain is indeed one of these places.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2... is the clearest English-language reference I can find. Specifically:

> The Member States’ criminal systems are divided on the issue of mandatory or discretionary prosecution. The discretionary principle is applied in Belgium, France, Denmark, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. In Germany, Austria, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Greece, Italy and Portugal the mandatory prosecution principle applies.

> The mandatory prosecution principle is that the prosecution authorities must act – even if no complaint has been lodged – where they suspect that an offence has been committed.

Prosecuting this is not optional.

That's not to say the government could not have applied pressure somehow if they wished of course (though in theory that's strongly discouraged), or even attempted to change the law entirely. Doing so publicly in any way though would pretty seriously harm their election changes on a national level (election is coming on November 11th).

Well outside the US it seems I stand corrected.

I'm from the US and I find the notion of mandatory prosecution nonsensical. There is a limit to the workload a prosecutor can handle and prioritizing crimes is just one way to make sure more serious crimes get the manpower needed to prosecute.

But thank you for pointing out that, also, the laws can always be changed which ultimately is political.

“The grant of broad discretion to prosecutors is so deeply ingrained in American law that U.S. lawyers often assume that prosecutorial discretion is inevitable. In fact, some countries in Europe and Latin America adhere to the opposite principle of "mandatory prosecution," maintaining, at least in principle, that prosecutors have a duty to bring any charge that is supported by evidence developed by the police or presented by citizens.”

https://law.jrank.org/pages/1870/Prosecution-Prosecutorial-D...

“The legality principle commands that every case in which there is enough evidence and in which no legal hindrances prohibit prosecution has to be brought to court. Adherence to the legality principle in the procedural sense means that the prosecution service cannot exercise any discretion over the prosecutorial decision. Its role is limited to the legal assessment of the sufficiency of the evidence against the suspect. Other considerations – what are known as public interest factors in opportunity systems – are not considered as factors that prosecutors are allowed to deploy in their decisions. Rather, the public interest is regarded as a consideration for the court which might be reflected in the verdict or the penalty imposed.”

http://www.law.gov.cy/law/lawoffice.nsf/0/A5FCDD28D5A9112CC2...

Wow, what a terrible way to have a discussion with someone. There are so many more ways to state this than to stick out your finger and say "YOU WRONG". It becomes impossible to read any discussions on this site when people take this tone.

If you trully cared about facts you'd appreciate being corrected and overlook your distaste. Tone should have no bearing unless you just want to vent your own frustration. I see highly downvoted comments being factually correct much too often.

I wonder, do you find that this tone and tactic encourages people to continue to discuss things with you?

I don't see a problem with my tone. It's all in your head as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it's you who is being confrontational and adding nothing to the topic of prosecutorial discretion. You can choose to post your opinion in edgewise here (for others to read), but I'm no longer responding to you.

We expect to treat a political issue that has lasted for years to be handled in parliaments not in jail. It's not about law. Workers rights, women voting and other now socially accepted rules were not legal then but were demanded anyway, I'm sure people was imprisoned/killed for these affairs also.

Exactly, you don’t simply try to separate unilaterally from the country. That’s what Catalonian leaders did, and got punished for it.

They did, because the central government have refused to agree to talk with them. If the central government had played ball and allowed a real election over independence, then the whole thing wouldn't have happened.

The Spanish government can't talk or agree on having an illegal election about a portion of people deciding about National sovereignty.

Article 1.2 - Spanish Constitution: 'National sovereignty is vested in the Spanish people, from whom emanate the powers of the State.'

http://www.congreso.es/constitucion/ficheros/c78/cons_ingl.p...

Exactly. What proindependence needs to do to try to have their way legally is to work towards a whole restructuring of the constitution. They just don’t care for that, they took an illegal shortcut, misusing funds in the process.

That's like telling a poor person that they just have to try to win the lottery. Everyone on both sides knows there's no chance in hell the rest of Spain will ever accept secession. Telling them to accept that is honest, pretending there is another path with any real chance of succeeding isn't.

I think that metaphor is not very apt, nor neutral. Catalonia is not poor in political power by any means, they have been pushing very successfully for years towards decentralization towards Barcelona. And winning the lottery is random, you can’t really negotiate.

In my opinion there are huge stresses in Spain that will open the can of worms that is redefining the Constitution during the next decades. Republicanism, decentralization, chunks of the constitution that nobody really puts in practice, etc. That wont happen in 2 days. But it can happen.

>separate unilaterally

The whole US was founded on the idea of a right to self-determination. Without unilateral separation, it would still be part of England.

Yet the US itself doesn't allow secession, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_U.S._state_secession_peti...

And if the revolutionary war had been lost, all those founding fathers would have found their heads separated from their torsos. And it would have been the legally correct thing to do.

That’s the thing with revolutions. They are only ok if they work.

Ergo, if you want something "not yet legal", you need violence and be sure to win. Really sad.

Not to mention killing a lot of people that had arrived first.

It seems that the holy right of self-determination does not apply if you are a native indian for some reason. Is even more strange if we think that indians comprised once the big majority of people living in that territory.

This shiny right does not apply also if you belong in the majority comprised by non-nationalist people living in Cataluña. Is strange that people so democratic and pacific didn't noticed that other people has rights also.

And yet, the only time any states seceded from the United States, the US declared war on them to bring them back into the Union, then went on to win that war and brought the states back into the Union.

Spain is not a federal country. Furthermore, this is closer to NYC trying to separate from New York State.

England wasn't a federation when America seceded either. The idea of "rights" (or at least the idea the American founders had in mind) is that they're moral concepts independent of whatever the legal system grants.

Sure, and they had to bring about a civil war to secede, because it was illegal.

That also happened some centuries ago, what was politically acceptable or moral was quite different then. I’d like to think that we now have the political maturity to do this slowly, legally and peacefully if it needs to happen at all.

I think it's beneficial to see it as: secession (in the US) became definitively illegal because of the Civil War.

It was specifically left out of the Constitution, for a few complex reasons, but from a de facto / de jure perspective, was ambiguous at best, until decided by war.

America had been taken over by the British. You cannot extrapolate that to every other country. That is certainly not the history of Catalonia.

The America that was taken over by the British (native Americans) weren't the ones seceeding. The ones seceeding were the descendants of British settlers/conquerors.

Fun fact: British America was around 200 years old when it gained independence. Catalonia has been part of Spain (as opposed to an independent principality) for around 300 years.

Were it not for the utterly ill-thought heavy handed actions of the East India company, governor and Lord North, the secession wasn't even wanted. They just wanted better representation within.

Poor handling, and particularly heavy handed handling, turned those moderates with a valid grievance into revolutionaries, and secessionists. The East India company was trying to screw over both Britain and the American colonies in equal measure.

There probably is a modern lesson in there, which is what results from overly draconian response, and something something overly powerful corporations.

And beforehand was part of Aragon. The independence of Catalonia is mythical.

> Catalonia has been part of Spain for around 300 years.

I bet that this land didn't arrived in a ship and was in the same place for a few millions of years at least. Spain has more than 300 years of history.

Sure, iberians, carthaginesians, fenicians, greek, romans, goths, arabs... but until the XV century it was several independent kingdoms, most important one Aragon and Castilla. So Spain as it is now is relatively recent. Also Portugal belonged to the same Kingdom for a while.

Yep. Well, then I'll won't marry anyone, because if the other part doesn't want to divorce, then you're married for life. At least you get to choose who do you marry. (A referendum is what was requested for years). I don't get the fierce defense of the unity thing, sorry. There's people demanding a referendum (as seen in Scotland) you just put them in jail, problem solved.

Marriage is a overused analogy that's pretty wrong if you ask me. It's only useful if you want elicit a "beaten wife" kind of comparison.

There are other kinds of contracts(marriage is a contract), where one of the partners can't just walk away from it with its share of the assets.

> There's people demanding a referendum (as seen in Scotland) you just put them in jail, problem solved.

It only seems a good example because it didn't pass. I bet it would be a worse-than-Brexit one if it had. The reality is that a country(a modern state) is built over a thousand of trade-offs that can't be just decided in a referendum.

I wish it would be that easy. I'm pretty tired of this mess.

Well, we can also look for an analogy of 'beaten wife' in an state.

Only if you want to trigger an emotional response. Territories aren't beings.

That's a very bad analogy because you use it opposite from how the situation is. A marriage exists within the context of state laws. The same state laws that say you can divorce also say you can't secede. So trying to secede is like trying to prohibit your partner from divorcing you. And yes, if you try to tie down your partner to stay with you it's exactly like trying to cut the ties that hold a state together.

Any criminal could just "vote" that what they did is legal. How would that work?

Yes, the same laws that do not allow a gay marriage or women voting, or allow 14 hours shifts, or slavery. Law is not my bible, I may have to obey it, but I can form my own opinions against it and fight for it.

> Law is not my bible

Sure, form opinions, ask for change, make it better if you and others see fit. You don't even have to follow he law. You just have to understand that if you break it you get punished. So as long as the law is there and you break it you are a criminal whether you believe in it or not.

What you said is exactly the kind of excuse any criminal would use: "I'm not guilty because I don't believe in that law". Which seems to match perfectly with the reasoning used in the dozens of comment you posted about this, alongside some bad examples and analogies that attempt to support it.

>Also, please downvote me. Actual statement of facts aren't welcomed here.

Facts we know (at least some of us, closer to the situation).

"What did you expect" is more loaded, as it also invokes political, and moral expectations, and can be misconstrued as "they got what they deserved" (as opposed to a neutral "they got what the law states").

And even the law can be bend, when there's a large public will -- e.g. the government is forced to reach a compromise, etc.

So, "secession is prohibited" is not enough to warrantee the current outcome.

As an example, dictatorship is also prohibited, but more than a few dictators or wannabe coup arranged for cosy non-jail deals when they were thrown out and democracy was restored...

Why should anyone downvote you? You are absolutely right. The sovereignty of a nation resides in all citizens of that nation. That’s definitely the case of Spain as it is the first article of their constitution. What happened in Catalonia was treason, and they were jailed for it. In my opinion, the sentence was actually a soft one. Violence was involved trying to take over, public funds were used illegally to help with the rebellion attempt, and the 50% of Catalans who are against separating from Spain had to live through such chaos.

I'm pretty sure you don't live in Catalunya. There was no violence, and a sentence with charges of 'sedition' and not 'rebelion' is the main difference. There's not caos in the streets as TV try to picture it, so they can justify sentences like this. nonsense.

There was lots and lots of psychological violence against the rest of Spain, all days in the news for more than five years and without pause. It was totally insufferable.

The rest of Spaniards had been called all kind of nasty things from this people, from fascists to thiefs, pigs, dumbs, violators, abusers and even dirty people that does not wash themselves.

Not to mention the reverse David-Star that where in fact the yellow ribbons. You don't wear it, you're harassed and called traitor and botifler. Friends of my parents, elder people that could suffer an infart, were assaulted with some people entering in their bus, crying slogans, calling them fascists and harassing them pushing banners and yellow ribbons under their nose. All of this just because they were in a holiday in the wrong part of the country and had commit the crime to hire a local bus to make an excursion. The driver didn't even tried to stop they.

Journalists doing their job were trown bottles with piss and water in direct. All in the name of peace.

Entire families are angry and split today because this snakes and child-emperors wanted to suck-suck-suck even more money

See the newspaper archives.

"The rest of Spaniards had been called all kind of nasty things from this people, from fascists to thiefs, traitors, pigs, dumb, violators, abusers and even dirty people that does not wash themselves."

You could say the same things are said from the 'other side' of the debate, I'm sure people say all these things from both sides, you cannot control everyone on such a big movements/issues. What I'm sure is that I haven't seen any leader say all that adjectives to anyone.

"Not to mention the anti-David-Star that where in fact the yellow ribbons".

Well... 'anti-david-star' what a nice way to describe the same ribbons (with different color) that people wear on the world cancer day.

The independence movement has always talked about the State/Government not letting people decide. It's not about hating someone because they think different than you. It's about an exercise of democracy.

> You cannot control everyone on such a big movements/issues. What I'm sure is that I haven't seen any leader say all that adjectives to anyone.

Please do not dare try again to take us for idiots. We are not talking of anonymous people, we are talking of all main independentist leaders acting as victims and light beings whereas saying things like those of spaniards:

"Scavengers, vipers, hyenas. Beasts with human form, however, that distil hate. A disturbed, nauseating hatred, like moldy dentures, against everything the tongue represents. They are here among us. They are disgusted by any expression of Catalanness... Beasts have names and surnames. We all know somebody"

Not, is not the nazi party in 1933, is President Torra spreading love in 2012.

Another example:

"Mrs. María Llanos de Luna devotes more time to her hairstyles than to the culture of the country where she lives... No, it is not natural to speak Spanish in Catalonia"

Not to mention this silly 2010 video from CIU party: "Spain steals from us". Has been 10 years hearing this victimism all the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QdyOSgbIVY

If you had being harassed for not-bearing a cancer ribbon, please don't hesitate to tell us your experience.

The GP manages to talk about facts surrounding the issue, yet you continue to attack them with little substance. You don't provide counter examples, you simply continue to attack. This helps no one find more truth. Please stop.

> elder people that could suffer an infart

(hum, just see now that "infart" is not an english word, heart attack is the correct term)

I live in Madrid, and I am disgusted by the image that this whole event is giving about Spain.

If you want to retain your image, perhaps give the secessionists a real sanctioned vote about who to belong to. Like the election about Scottish independence that were held in UK. Stonewalling the secessionists and then complain that they are not taking it through your parliament is not a good way to handle it.

(and it feels weird to put UK up there as a positive example with regards to mature handling of elections..)

One of the differences is that the scottish vote was legal. In spain, the only legal vote would be of all spain at once; and either catalonia voting alone, or seceding after a country-level pro-independence vote, would entail rewriting the whole country structure set forth by the constitution, in order to become a confederation. Which, looking into the current political climate, would probably leave us in a deadlock much worse than brexit for years.

Regarding stonewalling, they already have a much bigger representation than what their relative headcount would guarantee. It’s just that the rest of Spain, and more than half of Catalonia, don’t want the second richest region to leave with all the wealth that we all together have concentrated there throughout the years.

I knew.

I'd argue the sentences are harsh at least compared to many if not most European countries. Where I live, for example, the offence related to serious seditious activity (Endangering the sovereignty of Finland) carries a penalty range of 1 to 10 years imprisonment (generally, the upper range is rarely applied) and additionally requires at least a credible threat of violence or foreign state financial/military involvement.

Both Germany (10y to life) and France (30y to life) are harder, for example. Source (sorry, spanish): https://www.abc.es/espana/abci-alemania-y-francia-entre-pais...

Didn't bother to check France, but with respect to Germany, you must be talking about (serious) high treason. Give me a break.

Edit: Your reference is talking about rebellion. Not relevant?

Article talks about both rebellion and sedition. Laws in each country differ so you need to compare them by more than the name, which I understand that is what the article does. But please provide a more accurate source for the benefit of all, perhaps? Im not german, sorry.

Here you go: https://m.eldiario.es/catalunya/politica/tribunal-extradicio...

To my understanding, a German judge ruled that there are no corresponding laws in practice. The ones considered to be similar by the letter are handled differently: the German highest court has put a much higher hurdle to their application then the Spanish court did.

Thanks! But that only talks about rebellion, not sedition. Someone else has pointed out that this is akin to treason, and requires violence. The only place the word “sedition” is mentioned is in a literal quote from Puigdemont’s defense lawyer.

The translation of sedition is "Volksverhetzung", which is a crime in Germany, but it has to be s call to harm people, not "violence against the state".

And much less in the "they should expect that it might result in violence, when we send our armed riot police in" kind of violence, but the "people will use violence against people because of their religion/skin/sexuality/..." kind.

As I understand it, it was never even considered and thrown out right away.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/

It's hard to find anything very close to sedición, particularly given that I've understood that the Spanish Supreme Court has now found that threat of force or violence was not involved, apparently (?) basing their decision on the very broad sounding "outside of legal means" part. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

It was not treason, according to spanish law. The sentence is public (about 500 pages), if you can read spanish. Otherwise, an independent english reporter based in Spain, Matthew Bennet, has given very thorough coverage of it through twitter in english, for international followers. He uses Patreon if you are interested in his work.

>Violence was involved trying to take over

This is a lie, only the cops were violent.

E: If you think I'm wrong then post evidence and a bitcoin address, I'll gladly pay you $500 if you can show substantial evidence that there was violence involved. You won't be able to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNoPJWLQrDw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=klSib4rhdLs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGsNGOpxsQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyE0DtVd4Q8

I don't think this is relevant for the judgments in question if there was no incitement to violence or comparable from the convicted.

Good point! That was one of the things that were at stake at the trial.

I don't think your single chair-throwing video is anywhere near enough to paint the entire independence movement as the violent aggressors.

Compare those clips to these https://spanishpolice.github.io/

> substantial evidence that there was violence involved.

This was your original claim. You are implicitely withdrawing it and moving the goalpost to "evidence of substantial violence"(which is ok, but it was so easy to rebate in its original form that couldn't resist). BTW, states have the monopoly of violence which makes the comparison complicated to asses to anyone who believes in representative democracy and the separation of powers(policemen were trying to execute a court order, no less and no more).

You can keep your 500$, I already knew you were bluffing.

Regarding the issue you are bringing. Yes, the police intervention was a massive clusterfuck. It was impossible to stop the so called "referendum" without the complete cooperation of catalan police and the civil guard and national police cops were sent to an impossible mission. Some of them misbehave, probably out of frustration and fear/anger. This is something a policemen should never do.

If that's your point I could agree.

> You can secede in federalist countries

Maybe in theory. But looking at American civil war, Russian war in Chechenia, and others, in practice it certainly isn't so.

Well, states exist by (sometimes implicit) agreement of the population. Things get tricky when significant (by whatever definition of significant) part of the population is not happy with the arrangement.

> Trying to secede in a country where secession is illegal, is... you know... a crime.

No one is arguing whether what they are doing is legal or not, we are arguing whether it's right or wrong.

A lot of Catalans were expecting exactly this. The Spanish tribunals are highly politicized and it's an area where there wasn't much reform after Franco died of old age.

My parents and other family members that grew under Franco warned everyone that this is how the Spain would react, so again, not that we didn't know.

And they did it anyway.

The trial was highly questionable, starting on how the judge was appointed (breaking default procedure), continuing with the lack of memory of all Spanish governmental officials, and ending with not letting the defenses show videos that directly contradicted the sworn deposition of armed forces. This will all be revisited in the European Tribunal for Human Rights, of course, and Spain will get a slap in the hand and Europe will move on.

Technically speaking, as you say, they could have been charged with disobedience, as there was no violence, but you would rather have a death sentence for treason, I see...

So what? Everyone knows Spanish criminal law isn't up to modern European human rights standards. The European Court of Human Rights has found Spain violating ECHR due to handing out punishments for offences as ridiculous as "insulting the Crown".

These decisions smell like they might end up before the Court as well. If found in violation, for sake of consistency at least, personally I think the EU Commission should take a serious look whether this should elicit a rule of law review akin to that applied to Poland and Hungary. (Note: I'm not saying this is necessarily as serious.)

> Everyone knows Spanish criminal law isn't up to modern European human rights standards

Sight. And there they go again... with their obvious lies and stupid statements that don't resist two minutes of research.

Don't be silly. I was merely referring to well-known ECHR case law, such as Stern Taulats and Roura Capellera v. Spain, which was about two men convicted of burning a photograph of the Spanish royal couple, and stating some opinions of my own. How could I be lying?

And who are "they"? I'm no one particularly invested in this hassle.

"I'm surprised they weren't charged with treason"

They were. However, they were all acquitted of that charge (called 'rebellion' in Spain).

Because there was no violence, as some people in favor of the jailing thing still defend.

The Tribubal Supremo recognized in their sentence evidence of violence. Not enough for a rebellion one, but enough for sedition.

All politicians involved in the independence movement stand for no violence. In a protest of hundred of thousands of people, if someone throws a rock or burns something is a politicians fault? Does this make the movement violent? Don't make me laugh. I've seen unionist protests with much less people behave worse.

You may or may not agree with it, but this is not me randomly saying that there was violence. We are talking about the second most powerful court in Spain, unanimously agreeing that violence took place.

> The only way they wouldn't get prison terms was if the secession succeeded, which it did not.

“The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.” ― Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

> You can secede in federalist countries

I mean... Not in practice.

Just ask the US or Russian states.

Even in case of Russia, Baltic States and others exist as independent states while they were not during USSR days

What does it have to do with the possibility of seceding from the Russian Federation?

Statehood changes given enough time. In the case of Russia, and the states I mentioned, about sixty years. Scotland, part of UK for centuries, may have a referendum soon. Texas "seceeded" from Mexico in the 1840s.

So it goes.

The thread is about whether secession from federations is possible in general.

The USSR recognized the independence of those Baltic states (after military control of the situation failed) on 6 September 1991 and disappeared a few weeks later. Not the best example of orderly and and amicable secession, I think.

> Texas "seceeded" from Mexico in the 1840s.

By winning a war... any state can secede from any country if it's able to win a war against it.

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