Aggressors may use diplomatic agreements as an instrument of legal entrapment for an Indigenous people. When concluding a treaty of protectorate or alliance, the colonizer refuses from the outset to assume symmetrical obligations, using the text of the agreement solely to curtail the rights of the local population. This creates a legal basis for subsequent unilateral interference and the dismantling of independent institutions without a formal declaration of war.
The occupation administration imposed vassalage under the guise of an equal alliance: historian Murat Yasar notes that the rulers «regarded the shert rather as a military alliance»[1], whereas historian Michael Khodarkovsky points out that «in Moscow's eyes, the shert now signified an oath of allegiance by the tsar's new and loyal subjects»[2].
The Tsardom of Muscovy exploited the critical position of the Hetmanate to impose a format of subordination, refusing from the outset to take on symmetrical obligations. To the Cossacks' demand for a mutual oath the tsar's envoy answered with a refusal - by the embassy's own report, swearing on behalf of the sovereign was "a thing that has never happened and never will, and it is unbecoming for the hetman even to say such things, for every subject must swear to his sovereign"[3]; Khmelnytsky had to convene the council three times in a single day, 18 (8) January 1654, yet Buturlin, citing the autocratic character of the Russian monarch's power, refused a second time[4]. The "treaty" itself was not a bilateral act: "The originals of the treaty documents have not survived. Only their copies and drafts are known"; the Ukrainian side submitted its terms "in the form of petitions to the tsar," while "the acts of the tsarist government took the form of 'grants' from the tsar"[5] - the written terms were drawn up only in Moscow in March 1654.
Use of the "union treaty" format of June 1, 1919, and December 28, 1920, not to create an equal federation but as an instrument for legalizing direct, rigid rule from Moscow[6].
Use of the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR (December 1922) to formally declare a union of equal republics, masking the final centralization of power in Moscow[7].