All companies in the US presumably have some legal basis in US law even if not all of them are complying 100% of the time.
The equivalent situation would be if a Canadian or Mexican company simply started doing business with physical premises in Alaska or Nevada without bothering to file a single page of paperwork to any US authority.
Since this is a commonly understood difference the comment seems like it was made in bad faith.
That analogy is so bad I honestly wonder if _you're_ commenting in bad faith:
1. RIPE has basis in Ukrainian law: they supply all the IPs the Ukrainian ISPs use too.
2. You're acting like RIPE moved into Crimea after the annexation, while in reality they were operating there prior to it.
3. RIPE does not (to the best of my knowledge) have any official presence in either Ukraine or Crimea.
A better analogy would be something along the lines of "A business had customers in both the north and south US. Then, the US Civil war happened and the Union made it illegal to do business with the Confederacy. The business continued to have customers in the Union and Confederacy, in violation of US law."
The equivalent situation would be if a Canadian or Mexican company simply started doing business with physical premises in Alaska or Nevada without bothering to file a single page of paperwork to any US authority.
Since this is a commonly understood difference the comment seems like it was made in bad faith.