IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.
  • UP NEXT

    Trump prepares for critical day in hush money hearing and $464 million bond deadline

    08:01
  • For Facts Sake: Crime is down in the U.S., don’t let Trump anyone tell you differently

    03:44
  • Peter Beinart: U.S. leadership should be focused on U.S. policy, not Israeli elections

    08:45
  • Marwan Barghouti: the future leader of Palestine?

    03:46
  • Re-reading George Orwell’s ‘1984’ 

    13:56
  • David Miliband: Gaza famine a ‘failure of humanity’

    06:29
  • Unnecessary surgeries instead of abortion: 'It’s real life. It's no longer science fiction'

    12:58
  • Trump, TikTok, Truth Social, and their ties to a billionaire GOP megadonor

    05:49
  • What to know about the group believed to be behind the Moscow concert attacks

    01:20
  • Death toll in Moscow concert attack rises as gunmen are detained, Kremlin says

    01:29
  • Why VP Kamala Harris’ Visit to Planned Parenthood Is So Historic – Even For Dems

    04:43
  • Supreme Court: self-preservation at democracy’s expense, says Kermit Roosevelt

    04:11
  • Joy Reid: Civil Rights icon Myrlie Evers’ sense of 'disappointment' at the slow progress of civil rights

    11:20
  • The long history of U.S. intervention in Haiti 

    04:54
  • Gaza entrepreneurs want youth to play a role in Gaza’s future

    11:33
  • Exploring Haitian culture and the American Dream with 'American Street' by Ibi Zoboi

    10:18
  • Nikole Hannah-Jones on How an American ideal got hijacked

    11:33
  • Wife of Russian political prisoner: Russian people 'enraged' at Putin after years of 'being lied to'

    11:34
  • ‘A system of overseers’: Diluting progressive prosecutors & the voters who elect them

    11:51
  • ‘Righteous rage’: How female rage translates to political progress

    10:54

Velshi: Putin wasn’t punished appropriately for annexing Crimea. If he has his way, he’ll do it again

05:48

Aside from some relatively modest economic sanctions and Russia’s expulsion from the G8 group of world leaders, the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea went largely unchallenged. So now if Vladimir Putin has his way, he’d probably do it again. Annexing a territory is considered an act of aggression by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Annexation happens when one state acquires territory of another state by force. It usually happens after a military occupation, and it is generally illegal under international law. Vladimir Putin is certainly not the first leader to annex territory and claim it as his own. The world has a long history of power-hungry men who have attempted to forcibly take the land of others. It is not illegitimate to change borders, as long as it’s done through negotiation, with the parties on both sides of those borders agreeing to the change. Forcibly occupying another territory is illegal. When an annexation goes unchallenged by the rest of the world, it leads to violence, persecution, oppression and, in the case of Ukraine, war.