MP Zhurova called the UN Secretary General's statement on Crimea a provocation

The statement by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, that Crimea and Donbass do not have the right to self-determination is a provocation against Russia. This was announced on January 30 by Olympic speed skating champion and State Duma deputy Svetlana Zhurova.

"Actually, it's everywhere. It's like that in our sport. This is the attitude towards us. How can this be reversed? Question. If we are going to break this, it will be only by force. They force us with such statements so that we can win this right," she said in an interview "Газете.Ru ".

Zhurova recalled that in 2014, Crimea was reunited with Russia as a result of a peaceful referendum, but the West continues to ignore the will of the people of the region.

According to the MP, such statements are related to the desire to weaken Russia by any means, including information pressure.

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Guterres said on January 29 that the principle mentioned by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was not applicable to Crimea and Donbas, unlike Greenland. According to him, he and his colleagues came to this conclusion after a thorough review of the situation in the Office of Legal Affairs.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Dmitry Lyubinsky, in turn, said on January 30 that Guterres' words about the inapplicability of the principle of self-determination for Crimea and Donbass spoke about the bias of the organization's secretariat and its structures. In addition, he called this statement a statement of a "blatant nature."

On January 20, during a press conference on the results of Russian diplomacy in 2025, Lavrov said that the Crimean Peninsula plays no less an important role for Russia than Greenland does for the United States. He stressed that in Crimea, people went to a referendum after an unconstitutional coup, when the putschists who came to power declared war on the Russian language, while in Greenland there were no coups.

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