Ukraine has no right to sovereignty: Russia’s FM Lavrov

Echoing President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday questioned whether Ukraine had a right to sovereignty.

In a comment that will stir outrage in Kyiv, Lavrov said the Ukrainian government does not represent the country’s constituent parts.

“If we talk about the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity, one of the key documents … is the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations among Peoples,” he told the Interfax news agency.

He accused Ukraine of being out of line with that since 2014 when a Moscow-backed president was overthrown in Kyiv and replaced by a pro-Western leader, prompting Russia to annex Ukraine’s peninsula of Crimea and back an insurgency in its eastern regions.

“I don’t think anyone can claim that the Ukrainian regime, since the 2014 coup d’état, represents all the people living on the territory of the Ukrainian state,” Lavrov said.

President Putin, in recognising the two breakaway republics in Ukraine’s Donbass region claimed that Ukraine historically belongs to Russia.

In a lengthy televised address, Putin said eastern Ukraine was ancient Russian lands and that he was confident that the Russian people would support his decision.

He said that Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood and complained that post-Soviet Ukraine had wanted everything it could from Moscow without doing anything in return.