> Space law required that the space junk be returned to its national owner, but the Soviets denied knowledge or ownership of the satellite.[8] Ownership therefore fell to the farmer upon whose property the satellite fell. The pieces were thoroughly analyzed by New Zealand scientists which determined that they were Soviet in origin because of manufacturing marks and the high-tech welding of the titanium. The scientists concluded that they were probably gas pressure vessels of a kind used in the launching rocket for a satellite or space vehicle and had decayed in the atmosphere.[9]
I wonder how space law works when the national owner (CCCP) no longer exists? Does it go to Russia? Kazakhstan?
While many countries are successor states of the USSR, only Russia was declared the continuator.
> In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 1 April 1992, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev explained the situation: “Many people think that Russia became the legal successor of the USSR automatically, but this is far from being the case. We faced a very difficult political and diplomatic task. Russia is not a legal successor, but a continuing state of the USSR.
> There was no automaticity. It was an open question. The solution was suggested to us by Western countries, especially by the British, who had a huge experience in solving inheritance issues, they had an empire. The British dug somewhere in their archives and proposed a variant of a successor state. There is a monstrous confusion even among historians who write about it and political analysts. It is simply an unwillingness to understand. So, all of them are legal successors. All Union republics. The three Baltic republics refused to be successors. All the others, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan were legal successors and now remain legal successors. In relation to foreign debt, it was a deal. With respect to the UN Security Council, an international conference of all successors under international law had to be convened to resolve the issues. Therefore, a continuator was invented. A continuator is one of the inheritors, one of the legal successors, whom everybody recognises, but it doesn't require ratification. It is simply a declaration that it is recognised as a continuing state of the legal function that is written in the UN Charter for the USSR and now for Russia.
To be responsible for that damage as a successor, one would have to acknowledge that damage was done in the first place, which isn't something that Russia is willing to do.
And it's not even a government thing. One of the very common historical myths in Russia is that it was a net positive force in basically all the territories it ever occupied as an empire. The rhetoric around it is pretty much identical by the one used by European colonial empires pre-decolonization, except that Russia never underwent the latter (for good reasons: if it were to decolonize in proper sense, it would cease to exist as a state).
