evidence: Since December 10, two deputies from the Russian State Duma, the lower house of parliament, have described Kazakhstan's current territory as being a "gift" from Russia, echoing remarks by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014 that "Kazakhs never had any statehood" before the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991. [...] Nikonov said that when the Soviet Union was created in 1917, "Kazakhstan simply did not exist as a country, its northern territories were basically uninhabited," and that areas "further down south [in present-day Kazakhstan], most of the territories were basically given as a gift to [the Kazakhs] by the Soviet Union, by Russia." [...] Fedorov agreed completely with Nikonov’s statement that the territory of Kazakhstan was a "big gift from Russia."