Home Title Index Topic Index Sources Directory News Releases Sources Calendar

The Ukraine War in the Light of the UN Charter

Zayas, Alfred de
http://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/06/the-ukraine-war-in-the-light-of-the-un-charter/

Publisher:  CounterPunch
Date Written:  06/02/2023
Year Published:  2023  
Resource Type:  Article

The war in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022, but already in February 2014. The civilian population of the Donbas has endured continued shelling from Ukrainian forces since 2014, notwithstanding the Minsk Agreements. These attacks on Lugansk and Donetsk significantly increased in January-February 2022.

Abstract: 
-

Excerpt:

Without the Maidan Putsch and the anti-Russian measures immediately taken by the Putsch-regime, the Crimean and Donbass peoples would not have felt menaced and would not have insisted on their right of self-determination. Wittner errs when he uses the term 'annexation' to refer to the reincorporation of Crimea into Russia. 'Annexation' in international law presupposes an invasion, military occupation contrary to the will of the people. That is not what happened in Crimea in March 2014. First there was a referendum to which the UN and OSCE were invited -- and never came. Then there was an unilateral declaration of independence by the legitimate Crimean Parliamen, only then was there an official request to be re-incorporated into Russia, a request that went through the due process mill, being first approved by the Duma, then by the Constitutional Court of Russia, and only then signed by Putin. Had a referendum been held in 1994, when I was in Crimea, the results would surely have been similar. A referendum today would confirm the will of the Crimeans to be part of Russia, not Ukraine, to which they had been artificially attached by decision of Nikita Khruschev, a Ukrainian himself. There are no historical or ethnic reasons justifying Crimea's attachment to the Ukraine. Many international lawyers agree that Crimea exercised its right of self-determination and was not 'annexed' by Russia.

Topics
Sources-journalists use the sources website to find you


AlterLinks
c/o Sources


© 2023.