2023-04-24 03:24:16
The high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, criticized this Sunday the comments of the Chinese ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, questioning that the countries that belonged to the Soviet Union have an “effective status” before international law.
The Chinese ambassador’s statements came during an interview with the French television channel LCI, where he questioned Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea, to which Kiev had already responded by pointing out that what the diplomat said corresponds to an “absurd version” of history. Crimea, annexed in 2014 by Russia. Shaye noted of the peninsula that “it depends on how you look at the problem. There is a history. Crimea was Russian in the beginning.” He even went further, arguing that countries that emerged as independent nations after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 “have no effective status under international law because there is no international agreement confirming their status as sovereign nations.”
Faced with the statements of the Chinese ambassador, the head of European diplomacy added to the debate that “the EU can only assume that these statements do not represent China’s official policy.” “Unacceptable comments by the Chinese ambassador in France questioning the sovereignty of countries which became independent with the end of the Soviet Union in 1991,” Borrell said via his Twitter account.
On the other hand, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement stating that it had “learned with dismay the ambassador’s statements.” “It is up to China to say whether these statements reflect its position, we hope that is not the case,” and recalled that Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea is “illegal under international law.”
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