“I express full solidarity with the countries that have been attacked in the re-reading of their history and with our European allies”. So President Macron on the statements made on Friday 21 April by the Chinese ambassador in Paris on the “former Soviet countries” which “are not sovereign”. Lu Shaye’s words raised a fuss which is now the French president to comment: «We know the story and we abide by the internationally recognized borders and I am careful not to weaken this position. I don’t think it belongs to the position of a diplomat to use that kind of language,” Macron said on the sidelines of the North Sea Countries summit in Ostend. Live on French television a few hours ago, the ambassador had declared the non-sovereignty of the former Soviet countries “because they have no effective status in international law, there has been no agreement to make their sovereignty concrete”. The high representative of EU foreign policy Josep Borrell also immediately asked for clarifications for what Shaye said when he arrived at the Foreign Affairs Council. A request granted shortly after by the Chinese government itself: “China respects the state of sovereignty of the former Soviet republics,” clarified the spokesman for the Beijing Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning. Position reinforced by the Chinese embassy in France: «The judgments of the Chinese ambassador in France, Lu Shaye, who questioned the sovereignty of the former Soviet countries on TV on Friday, were not a political statement, but an expression of personal opinions in a televised debate», reads the official note released by the diplomatic mission. “They should not be over-interpreted and China’s position on relevant issues has not changed,” the text continues. “On territorial sovereignty, the position of the Chinese side is consistent and clear and respects the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries and supports the purposes and principles of the UN Charter”. A distancing that Borrell welcomed: «It is important that Beijing has distanced itself from the words of its ambassador in France», he said at the end of the Foreign Affairs Council, «now we have a concrete answer that those positions not only the China’s official position and it’s good news.”
Ambassador’s words
Speaking of Beijing’s possible role in mediating the war in Ukraine, the Chinese ambassador answered the question about the Ukrainian borders and the Russian-occupied Crimea in 2014: «It depends on how you perceive the problem. There is history. Crimea was part of Russia, it was Khrushchev who offered it to Ukraine at the time of the USSR». Immediately afterwards he invited the international community to stop “quibbling” on the question of the former Soviet borders. “Now it is urgent to implement the ceasefire,” he explained, considering the borders a mere technicality, with the states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet empire which should thus remain in an undefined gray line.
Read on about Open