Baltics condemn China envoy's stance on ex-Soviet nations
The three Baltic states have strongly condemned comments by China’s envoy to France who appeared to say in a recent French television interview that the former Soviet republics aren't sovereign nations
HELSINKI (AP) — The three Baltic states have strongly condemned comments by China’s envoy to France, who appeared to suggest in a recent French television interview that former Soviet republics aren't sovereign nations.
The foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in separate announcements late Saturday deemed statements by Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France, as unacceptable.
In a recent interview with the French news channel LCI, he was asked if he thought that the Crimean Peninsula belongs to Ukraine. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that most of the world denounced as illegal.
“That depends ... on how one perceives this problem,” the envoy told the broadcaster. “There’s the history. Crimea was at the beginning Russian, no? It was (Soviet leader Nikita) Khrushchev who gave Crimea to Ukraine in the era of the Soviet Union.”
