What’s new: Beijing affirmed that it respects the sovereignty of former republics of the Soviet Union after China’s envoy in France made controversial remarks about the sovereign status of the countries.
“The fact that the Soviet Union was a federal state that acted as a whole externally… does not deny that the participating republics have the status of sovereign states after the dissolution of the Soviet Union,” Mao Ning, foreign ministry spokesperson, said during a press briefing Monday in response to a reporter’s question.
