MOSCOW, January 31. /TASS/. The statement by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that the right to self-determination does not apply to Crimea and Donbass is due to pressure from Western UN Security Council members, Mikhail Myagkov, scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Society, said.
"I believe that the UN secretary general, in fact, is under tremendous pressure today, primarily from Western countries - Great Britain, France, and the United States of America, which are members of the Security Council. I think that this statement by the secretary general pours water into the mill of the policy of neocolonialism, a new redivision of the world and the preservation of Western domination, which the Western world adheres to today," Myagkov said in an interview with TASS.
Earlier, Guterres said responding to a question from TASS said that the UN secretariat had concluded that the right of peoples to self-determination was inapplicable to Crimea and Donbass. According to him, the world organization's secretariat believes in these situations that "the principle of territorial integrity prevails" over the right of self-determination of peoples.