In 1774, following the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, the Russian and Ottoman empires agreed to refrain from interfering with the Crimean Khanate through the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca.

The constitutional change (articles 22 and 23) to accommodate the transfer was made several days after the decree issued by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

Taking into account the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity and the close economic and cultural ties between the Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet decrees:

[9][10] Sevastopol became a closed city due to its importance as the port of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and was attached to the Crimean Oblast only in 1978.

"[11] Mark Kramer, director of Cold War Studies at Harvard University, argued that Proceedings of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium meeting indicated that the parliaments of both the Russian SFSR and the Ukrainian SSR had given their consent to the transfer of Crimea, and so had complied with Article 18 of the Soviet Constitution, which stated that "the territory of a Union Republic may not be altered without its consent."

Additionally, Kramer disputed the relevance of questioning the transfer's constitutionality by stating that the "legal system in the Soviet Union was mostly a fiction," and that the Russian Federation recognised Crimea as being a part of Ukraine in 1991 in the Belovezha Accords, as well as in 1994 in the Budapest Memorandum.

[8][13][14] It was also attributed to Communist Party first secretary Nikita Khrushchev, although the person who signed the document was Chairman Kliment Voroshilov, the Soviet Union's de jure head of state.

[17][18] Mark Kramer, professor of Cold War Studies at Harvard University, also claimed that the transfer was partly to help Khruschev's then-precarious political position against the Prime Minister Georgii Malenkov through winning support of the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party Oleksiy Kyrychenko.

[20] Since Sevastopol in Crimea was the site of the Black Sea Fleet, a quintessential element of Soviet and then of Russian foreign policy, the transfer had the intended effect of binding Ukraine inexorably to Russia, "Eternally Together", as a poster commemorating the event proclaimed.

[21] There was also a desire to repopulate parts of Crimea with Slavic peoples, mainly Russians and Ukrainians, after the peninsula was subject to large-scale deportations of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia by the Soviet regime in 1944.

[28] After the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, the territories of Sevastopol and Crimea were seized by the Russian Federation; the annexation was formalized following a referendum in which 96% of the Crimean population is reported to have voted "Yes."