MOSCOW (TASS) — The Kremlin sees Russia as the legal successor of the Soviet Union de jure and de facto, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Monday when commenting on a dissenting opinion on the status of the Russian state voiced by a judge from the Russian Constitutional Court.

A Constitutional Court judge earlier labelled the Soviet Union “an illegally established state”, saying that the Russian Federation must not be considered as the legal successor of the “repressive and terrorist deeds” of the Soviet government.

However, Peskov emphasized:

This is the opinion of a judge from the Constitutional Court, according to practice such opinions are published. In this case we leave it without comment, and we hold that Russia is the legal successor of the Soviet Union de jure and de facto.

As the Kommersant daily wrote on Monday, Judge Konstantin Aranovsky had called the Soviet Union “an illegally established state”, saying that the Russian Federation must not be considered as the legal successor of the “repressive and terrorist deeds” of the Soviet government. According to him, Russia should obtain the constitutional status of a state “having nothing to do with totalitarian crimes”. That was Aranovsky’s statement in his comments on one of the recent decisions by the Constitutional Court.