Putin Ally Weighs In on Texas Independence

Russia's former president and prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, weighed in on the topic of the state of Texas seceding from the United States in an interview with state-run media, published on Thursday.

Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, told outlets including the country's state-run news agency RIA Novosti that the topic would have been considered "nonsense" just 20 years ago but now it is widely discussed.

The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), also known as TEXIT, is the largest organization promoting that the state leave the United States. A Supreme Court decision on January 22 to allow federal officials to remove parts of a razor-wire barrier that Texas Governor Greg Abbott had installed along the border with Mexico to deter illegal migration emboldened the case.

Abbott has said the wire installed in Texas is an effective deterrent to the "illegal crossings" that President Joe Biden encourages. Abbott and Biden have repeatedly clashed over border issues and the Republican governor's measures to fight illegal immigration in the state. An influx of people have crossed the border from Mexico into Texas.

Per the 1869 U.S. Supreme Court case Texas vs. White, all individual states, including Texas, are prohibited from unilaterally deciding to secede from the United States. It held that the U.S. is "an indestructible union" from which no state can secede.

Daniel Miller, president of the TNM, has said there are tens of thousands of Democrats in Texas who support the state seceding from the United States. On February 13, Miller and others endorsing secession visited Abbott's office to submit more than 170,000 garnered signatures—part of a legislative effort to place the initiative on the Republican primary election ballot in the state, Newsweek previously reported.

"I wrote in my humorous forecast that this will happen," said Medvedev. "Now we are all waiting for the conclusion of an agreement on friendship and cooperation between the TPR and the DPR—the Texas People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic."

Medvedev was using a term that social media users coined, joking that Russian President Vladimir Putin had "signed a decree recognizing the independence of the Texas People's Republic" in a reference to Russia's illegal occupation of Ukraine's eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions; Moscow calls them the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic. They are both internationally unrecognized republics of Russia in eastern Ukraine.

"But in fact, speaking seriously, 20 years ago this would seem nonsense. Yes, the United States is a federation, the federation has more internal problems, we know from the experience of the Soviet Union and our experience too, but, nevertheless, it is a very strong country," Medvedev said.

"And now this is quite discussed."

Miller has told Newsweek that he believes Texas could become an independent nation within three decades.

"I think the trajectory the federal government is on, the trajectory that Texas is on, I think we are headed in that direction so, whether by conscious decision or collapse of the federal system in its inability to meet its basic requirements, I think Texas becomes an independent nation definitely inside of 30 years," Miller said.

In April 2023, Medvedev said he would "be rooting for Texas" should it declare independence from the United States.

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