Recognising the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic was a very difficult but necessary decision. It was necessitated primarily by humanitarian considerations and a willingness to protect the civilian population from ongoing armed violence in Donbas by the present Ukrainian authorities. The decision was taken in light of the free will of the Donbas people and expressed through an official appeal by their representatives. This was done, moreover, on the basis of provisions of the United Nations Charter, the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning friendly relations among states, the CSCE Final Act of 1975, and other fundamental documents -- wherein the right of peoples to self-determination and the obligation of other states to respect such rights are recorded.
From the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis eight years ago, Russia has made persistent efforts to resolve disagreement by peaceful, diplomatic means. Russian representatives facilitated intra-Ukrainian dialogue in the Contact Group and worked on a settlement in the Normandy format. My German and French colleagues here argued that their governments tried to find a peaceful settlement to the conflict in Donbas. Well, apparently, these efforts were insufficient, or rather insincere.
In fact, for the past eight years representatives of the current regime in Kiev, with the silent acquiescence of their foreign handlers, have advocated something completely different -- namely, to establish control of the border and suppress dissent in Donbas without giving its population any of the political guarantees and status that are stipulated for in the Minsk Package of Measures. Instead of reaching political agreement with its fellow citizens, the regime carried out a punitive operation against them that qualifies as genocide or a civil war. In flagrant violation of the Minsk Package of Measures, the Kiev regime imposed a brutal transport and economic blockade on Donbas, suspended pensions and social benefits of its inhabitants, referred to them derogatorily as "specimens", and suggested they get out of Ukraine.
