Pro-Russian separatists from the Chechen "Death" battalion walk during a training exercise in the territory controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, eastern Ukraine, December 8, 2014. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters UPDATE: The pro-Russia separatist rebels backtracked on this proposal on Wednesday.

“The DNR and LNR of course consider Crimea is a part of Russia,” envoys said. “Moreover, our republics would ideally like to become part of the Russian Federation.”

The pro-Russia separatist regions of Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) just named Crimea as a part of Ukraine in the draft amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine.

That doesn't jibe with claims made by their backers in Moscow.

From the document (translated into English by Business Insider):

"Article 133. The administrative-territorial system of Ukraine contains : Autonomous Republic of Crimea, some regions with special status in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, provinces, districts, cities, districts in cities, towns and villages.

Ukraine is composed of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, some regions with special status — the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, Vinnytsa, Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Transcarpathian, Zaporizhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Luhansk, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Poltava , Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytsky, Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Chernihiv regions, cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol."

Asked to clarify, an LNR envoy, Vladislav Deynego, said that it's not their place to "bring changes to the constitution of Ukraine regarding the presence or absence of Crimea," according to Lenta News.

"We are acting exactly within the borders of the Minsk agreement. In the Minsk agreements, there was no mention of Crimea," he added. Consequently, he added, the constitution's draft only reflects the changes with respect to the separatist regions, DPR and LNR.

The interesting thing here is that by labeling Crimea as part of Ukraine, this document directly contradicts Russia's annexation of Crimea with special forces in March 2014.

A map published by Canada's Mission to NATO when arguing that the Crimea peninsula (marked) is not part of Russia. Twitter/@CanadaNATO Last year, after signing the treaty to annex Criema, Putin drew cultural connections between Russia and Crimea when he addressed both houses of the Kremlin's legislature.

"We all used to belong to the same country: The Soviet Union. ... The Soviet Union has collapsed. The events happened in such a fast way that many of the countries didn't realize. ...

"When Crimea ended up in a different state, Russia realized that not only Russia was robbed, but Russia was robbed in broad daylight."



"Crimea is a Russian land," Putin added.

The West condemns the annexation of Ukraine, calling it illegal. And it seems that the pro-Russia separatists (at least in this document) don't recognize Russia's claim either.