Lithuania’s top diplomat explains distrust in Bejing citing Chinese envoy’s Crimea statement

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis reiterated the position of Baltic States who don’t trust China to mediate a settlement in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

That’s according to a tweet Landsbergis posted on Saturday, Ukrinform reports.

“If anyone is still wondering why the Baltic States don't trust China to ‘broker peace in Ukraine’, here's a Chinese ambassador arguing that Crimea is Russian and our countries' borders have no legal basis,” Landsbergis wrote.

The head of Lithuanian diplomacy referred to the recent comment made by China’s Ambassador to France Lu Shaye, who claimed former Soviet countries have “no effective status” in international law.

Besides the obvious Ukraine implications, the statement also outraged the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia – all ex-Soviet republics that broke away as the USSR collapsed.

According to The Kyiv Independent, when asked about Crimea, the ambassador said the issue of whom the peninsula belongs to “depends on how you see the problem.” He went on to claim that Crimea was “Russian at the beginning,” stopping short of specifying the timeframe he referred to.

Earlier, the spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, Wang Wenbin, said China would develop a mutually beneficial strategic partnership with Russia and continue to work with the international community to find a political solution to the “Ukraine crisis.”

Regarding Sino-Russian relations, the spokesman noted that China and Russia are "committed to the principles of non-alignment, non-confrontation, and non-targeting of any third party, and are developing a new type of relationship between major powers based on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and mutually beneficial cooperation."