The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has strongly condemned the decision of Syria to recognize the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent.
A ministry statement on June 30 said the decision was "an unfriendly act against Ukraine, an encroachment on its sovereignty and territorial integrity, a gross violation of Ukrainian law, the UN Charter, and the fundamental norms and principles of international law."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy cut relations with Syria on June 29 over the decision, which the ministry said was an attempt by the Syrian regime “to give pseudo-subjectivity to the Russian occupation administrations in Donetsk and Luhansk at the behest of its Kremlin curators.”
Parts of Luhansk and Donetsk came under Russia-backed separatists' control after Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
Ukraine is also initiating the process of imposing a trade embargo on Syria, as well as imposing other sanctions on Syrian legal entities and individuals, the Foreign Ministry statement said.
Ukraine closed its embassy in Damascus in 2016 and in 2018 ordered the Syrian Embassy in Kyiv to close “in connection with the crimes of the regime of Bashar al-Assad against the Syrian people."
Syria, a close ally of Russia and a beneficiary of Russian military assistance in its civil war, is the first state other than Russia to recognize the two separatist regions.
