MOSCOW. Feb 22 (Interfax) - Only those states that represent the entire population in their territory are entitled to sovereignty, and Ukraine has not been such since 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"Speaking of the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity, a key document viewed by all legal experts as essential for interpretation of the UN Charter is the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States. The declaration has never been called into question," Lavrov said on the Rossiya-24 channel (VGTRK).
The declaration affirms "the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent states conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples as described above and thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed or color," he said.
"I believe no one can say that the Ukrainian regime has been representing the entire people that lives in the territory of the Ukrainian state since the state coup perpetrated in 2014," Lavrov said.
Many Ukrainian regions rejected "the unconstitutional move, and what happened in Crimea and eastern Ukraine shows how much this government and this regime were denounced by millions of Ukrainian residents back then," he said.
Lavrov thus commented on a statement by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres who said that the recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics violated the sovereignty of Ukraine.