UNITED NATIONS, September 20. /TASS/. The Kiev regime can’t represent the residents of Crimea and Donbass, so by supporting Kiev the West violates the right of these regions for self-determination, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine.
"The unconditional support in Western capitals for the actions of the criminal Kiev regime is nothing else but a violation of the principle of self-determination [in relation to Crimea and Donbass], which follows a gross interference in internal affairs," he said.
Referring to the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, which is enshrined in the UN Charter, the minister said, "Western diplomats and politicians turn a blind eye to this most important norm of international law, when it comes to Ukraine, in an attempt to reduce the underlying reasons and essence of what is happening to the inadmissibility of violating territorial integrity."
He said that the 1970 UN Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States, adopted unanimously, in accordance with the UN Charter, enshrines that the principle of respect for territorial integrity is applicable to "states that observe in their actions the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples <...> and as a consequence have governments representing <...> all the people living on a given territory."
"It is beyond argument that the Ukrainian neo-Nazis that seized power in Kiev as a result of a coup did not represent the population of Crimea and Donbass," Lavrov said.