On Saturday night, France expressed its “surprise” at the statements of the Chinese ambassador in Paris, who questioned the independence of the countries that belonged to the Soviet Union and the fact that Crimea belongs to Ukraine.

In an interview on Friday night with the French television network LCI, Mr Lou Sayer he estimated that the countries that belonged to the Soviet Union “have no real status under international law because there was no international agreement to finalize their status as independent countries”.

Regarding Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia seized and annexed in 2014, he said: “It depends on how you look at the problem. There is History. Crimea was originally Russian. Khrushchev was the one who offered Crimea to Ukraine during the time of the Soviet Union.”

The Chinese diplomat called for an end to “crooked justice” in the post-Soviet border issue. “Now the most urgent thing is for them to stop, for there to be a truce” between Russia and Ukraine, he estimated.

The French foreign ministry said in a statement that it was “surprised to learn” of the statements and asked China “to state whether they reflect its position, which we hope is not the case”.

Ukraine was internationally recognized “on the borders that include Crimea in 1991 by the entire international community, including China, after the fall of the ECHR as a new member state of the UN,” Paris underlined, recalling that the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 is “illegal under international law”.